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resistion
The reference to GigaFab should be considered carefully, it's actually four ...
joepaiii
rhusain, I agree sounds very high. Not sure how anyone will have the revenue ...
Report: TSMC reserves land for $26 billion fab
Peter Clarke
12/14/2011 9:01 AM EST
LONDON – A 50-hectare (about 120 acres) plot of land is being appropriated by the Central Taiwan Science Park in Taichung, Taiwan, on which foundry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC) could build a 450-mm wafer fab, according a Taiwan Economic News report.
The report added that the projected cost of the 450-mm wafer fab would involve an investment exceeding NT800 billion (about $26 billion), or nearly three times the cost of TSMC's Fab 15 Gigafab currently being built on the science park.
The report referenced TSMC as saying Tuesday (Dec. 12) that the earliest it would start building the fab would be 2015 to 2016 but that once the 450-mm diameter wafer size becomes mainstream it planned to also build 450-mm wafer fabs in Hsinchu and Tainan.
TSMC is expected to bring up 450-mm wafer processing at two of its established wafer fabs, built for 300-mm wafer processing, before building a dedicated 450-mm wafer fab.
A 450-mm pilot line is expected to go into Fab 12 in Hsinchu, Taiwan and be running the 20-nm process technology node by 2013 to 2014. Following that TSMC plans to bring up 450-mm volume production within Fab 15 on the Central Taiwan Science Park in Taichung. This would process devices at the 14-nm node, the node at which TSMC is expected to switch from planar transistors in bulk CMOS to FinFET structures.http://cms.eetimes.com/ContentCreator/SelectContentItemType
Related links and articles:
Taiwan Economic News story
TSMC to make FinFETs in 450-mm fab
TSMC goes it alone with 3-D IC process
TSMC breaks ground for third phase of GigaFab
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rhusain
12/14/2011 3:22 PM EST
I did'nt think a fab costs $26 billion I wonder if this article is correct
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joepaiii
12/14/2011 11:59 PM EST
rhusain, I agree sounds very high. Not sure how anyone will have the revenue stream to pay for a 26 billion dollar investment. I always heard you need ~3x the cost of the fab in revenue to justify it. Since the whole semi market market is currently 300 billion and leading edge process is only a fraction of that, hard to imagine how many of these fabs get built...
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resistion
12/15/2011 12:15 AM EST
The reference to GigaFab should be considered carefully, it's actually four phases, each like a fab build on its own (averaging 2-3 billion each).
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