TSMC reportedly is planning to build a new advanced packaging plant in Chiayi or Yunlin county, southern Taiwan as it is fast revising its production roadmaps in response to rapid increases in demand for 5/3/2nm chips manufacturing, with Chiyai more likely to be the fab location, according to industry sources.

TSMC did not comment on the report.

This will be TSMC's sixth advanced packaging plant, if constructed. The company now operates four advanced packaging fabs, located in Hsinchu Science Park (HSP), Central Taiwan Science Park (CTSP), Southern Taiwan Science Park (STSP), and Longton in northern Taiwan, mainly engaged in bumping, advanced testing and backend 3D packaging, the sources said.

Its fifth packaging fab is now under construction at Chunan, also in northern Taiwan, with a land area 1.3 times the aggregate of the existing four. The mega plant is slated for commercial production in the second half of 2022, focusing on 3D stacking, the sources noted.

At the moment, many of TSMC's clients have their chips fabricated with advanced process nodes and packaging technologies, including Apple, AMD, Nvidia, MediaTek, Xinlinx and Chinese chip designers, the sources said.

As its advanced manufacturing nodes continue to progress, TSMC has also been keen on developing 3D IC packaging technologies. It has unveiled 3D Fabric platform integrating frontend 3D stacking technology and backend 3D packaging solutions such as CoWoS and InFO, able to turn out SoIC (system on integrated chips) products, the sources said.

The 3D Fabric platform can help clients integrate multiple logic chips and HBM (high bandwidth memory) or heterogeneous chiplets, enabling upgrades of system performance and functionality, minimize chip sizes and shorten time to market for chip solutions, the sources continued.

TSMC is aggressively carrying out advanced foundry and packaging capacity expansions, and its fab tools supply chain players are all poised to see their revenues grow significantly in the next few years as a result.

TSMC has projected its total capital expenditures will top US$100 billion during 2021-2023, with US$30 billion for 2022 and US$40-44 billion for 2023. But market observers expect the company to further raise its capex budgets for the period, judging from ever-higher construction costs and expansion scales.

According TSMC, its continuous expansions in advanced and mature foundry as well as advanced packaging fab capacities are mainly to satisfy strong long-term customer demand for 5G and HPC chips for smartphones, commercial PCs and servers, as well as automotive and chipmaking chips.

By: DocMemory
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