[줌인] Semiconductor dinosaurs cut off business with China and build high-tech factories in the US

Input 2020.12.24 14:36

TSMC in Taiwan recruits large number of TFs to establish factories in the US with the support of the US government
Samsung’s Texas plant also strengthens production capacity… Partnership with Qualcomm and Google
“U.S. government supports state-of-the-art manufacturers to head to the US instead of China”

The United States, threatened by China’s semiconductor proliferation, continues to attract non-Chinese Asian semiconductor companies as allies. In particular, Samsung Electronics, which is rapidly growing in the foundry field, is also strengthening partnerships with the United States following TSMC, the world’s largest semiconductor consignment manufacturer (foundry), which had a partnership with China’s Huawei, discontinued business with China and built a new factory in the United States. It is analysis.

According to the Nikkei Asian Review on the 24th, TSMC is hiring current employees and new engineers to build a chip manufacturing plant worth $12 billion (KRW 13 trillion) in Arizona next year, TSMC Chairman Mark Ryu said. Typically, this amount is estimated as the cost of establishing one foundry line.

Prior to this, TSMC has not received new orders from Huawei since last May due to US sanctions on Huawei in China. This is a serious blow for Huawei. Currently, TSMC and Samsung Electronics are the only companies in the world that can commission cutting-edge chips such as 5nm and 7nm processes, among which TSMC was one of Huawei’s strongest partners.

The U.S. government has made various efforts to attract TSMC as a friend. In the US, in particular, in the semiconductor industry, the chip manufacturing capabilities of US semiconductor manufacturers, including Intel, continue to lag behind companies in Asian countries such as Samsung Electronics and TSMC.

According to the American Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) and the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), the U.S. share of global semiconductor production capacity declined significantly from 37% in 1990 to 12% in 2020. During the same period, Asian countries such as Taiwan, Korea, Japan and China now account for 80% of the world’s semiconductor production capacity.

In terms of production capacity as well as technically, the manufacturing competitiveness of American companies has constantly gone downhill. Intel has been reigning as the world’s best semiconductor company as an integrated semiconductor company (IDM) that does both chip design and production since the 1980s, but the situation has changed in the 2010s. Intel, which has always been the first to introduce a new process in the industry, began to slow down the microprocessor conversion from the 14-nano process to Samsung Electronics and TSMC.

Accordingly, the federal government is pushing ahead with a plan to grant various incentives and tax incentives to attract semiconductor companies’ factories not technically related to China to the US mainland. In fact, in the process of establishing a semiconductor plant in Arizona this time, TSMC is sending a task force consisting of 300 people, and the US government is also sending support, such as providing a working visa.

Nikkei said that Samsung Electronics, the world’s largest memory company and second largest memory company with 16.4% of the world market share in the foundry field, is also joining the efforts of the United States. According to Nikkei, Samsung Electronics is reportedly planning to expand its foundry production capacity in Austin, Texas, in order to consign chips for large companies such as Apple, Google, Qualcomm, and Tesla in the US.

Meanwhile, experts are analyzing that such cooperation between the United States and Taiwan is in line with the military and diplomatic conflict between China and Taiwan. In October, China deployed the latest assault and landing ship called the “helicopter aircraft carrier” aimed at Taiwan, and Taiwan immediately responded by releasing the latest stealth patrol ship called the “aircraft carrier killer”.

“The state-of-the-art semiconductor technology plays a key role in various fields such as stealth fighters, air traffic control, and guided missiles,” said Semiconductor Engineering, a semiconductor magazine in the United States. Also, as in Taiwan and Korea, various incentives must be mobilized to establish state-of-the-art fabs (semiconductor factories).”