The eventful week ended with the opening ceremony of the first TSMC plant in Japan, which has already been built and will begin producing products by the end of this year. The expected emergence of two more TSMC enterprises in Japan will allow the latter company to gain a foothold in the local market; Sony and Renesas are already ready to become TSMC clients.
As Nikkei Asian Review notes, the opening ceremony of the joint venture between TSMC, Sony and Denso, which operates under the designation JASM, was attended not only by hundreds of representatives of companies in the semiconductor sector of the Japanese industry, but also by members of the Japanese government. TSMC was represented by CEO CC Wei and company founder Morris Chang. For TSMC, this site was the first overseas facility opened since 2018. Trial production of products will soon begin on the assembly line of the Japanese company TSMC, and the company will begin mass production before the end of this year.
As noted more than once earlier, the first JASM plant will produce 12nm, 16nm, 22nm and 28nm chips, and TrendForce analysts are convinced that the bulk of the production program will be for 22nm and 28nm products, and more advanced 12nm and 16nm chips will make up only a small part of the range. Every month, the first JASM facility will be able to process from 40 to 50 thousand silicon wafers of 300 mm size.
An important part of the ceremony was the statement by TSMC management, according to which the company intends to more than double the initial investment in the development of projects in Japan, raising the bar beyond $20 billion. The second TSMC enterprise in the country will be built with the financial participation of Toyota Motor. It will begin operating by the end of 2027 and will produce 7-nm and 6-nm products that will find application in the industrial segment and the field of artificial intelligence. Let us recall that the Japanese Denso Corporation, a shareholder of the first JASM enterprise, is the largest supplier of automotive components to the Toyota Motor assembly line. According to preliminary data, the Japanese authorities are ready to allocate up to $4.9 billion in subsidies for the construction of the second TSMC plant in Japan. TSMC's two facilities will collectively be able to process more than 100,000 silicon wafers per month. Combined with the first plant, Japanese government subsidies will reach $8 billion.
Japanese customers accounted for about 6% of TSMC's total revenue of $69.3 billion in 2023. Local equipment suppliers are actively involved in providing TSMC with the necessary means for chip production. Since 2019, the TSMC research center has been operating in Ibaraki Prefecture, which deals with problems of materials science and develops advanced methods for packaging chips. Over time, an experimental line should appear in Japan, where new technologies in this area will be tested.
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