TSMC Pushes Into IC Assembly With Ambitious Goal

Silicon foundry giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) is vigorously developing presence in the high-end IC packaging and test sector and targets revenue of US$2 billion from such business in three years.

Providing packaging and test service will make the company the world's first pure chipmaker with integrated production, from process technology and silicon IP to chip foundry and packaging and test.

Industry executives feel the world's No.1 supplier of tailor-made chips may pose rising threat to established IC assemblers, including No.1 player Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc. (ASE), and No.2 player Siliconware Precision Industries Co., Ltd., believing TSMC to replace Powertech Technology Inc. (PTI) as Taiwan's No.3 IC assembler when it achieves the US$2 billion goal.

TSMC is projected to become the island's No.4 assembler next year although its targeted revenue of US$1 billion from this service accounts for barely 10% of its total revenue.

TSMC has recruited 400 specialists of packaging and test. In the early stage of its assembly service, the company provided high-end CoWoS (chip-on-wafer-on-substrate) service. Now it is promoting low-cost, high-performance InFO-WLP (integrated FanOut wafer-level packaging) process technology.

According to TSMC's president and co-chief- executive-officer, C.C. Wei, although CoWoS is already available, the output remains low because of high cost. Therefore, the company has introduced InFO, a low-cost packaging technology capable of integrating logic ICs with memory ICs. (KL)

TSMC's Integrated Production Plan

Sector	Plan
Process technology development	Buy into Mapper and ASML, team up with Applied Materials, KLA-Tencor
Silicon IP service	Invest in Global Unichip, team up with eMemory and Yuan Xing
Foundry service	Boost production at 12-inch fabs in Central Taiwan Science Park and Southern Taiwan Science Park, plan 18-inch fab at Central Taiwan Science Park, accelerate 16nm/20nm process production
IC packaging and test	Deploy 400-plus specialists, release CoWoS and InFO technologies

Source: TSMC