TSMC: Supporting Automotive Electronics Customers and Delivering on Your Promise to Other Customers | TechNews

Foundry leader TSMC said today that it will continue to work closely with automotive electronics customers to support capacity needs and deliver on its promises to other customers.

Regarding the automotive chip manufacturing process, TSMC said it will support automotive chip production by focusing on special 8-inch wafer manufacturing processes.

German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier recently called on the Taiwanese government to increase the supply of chips for the tough German auto industry. He called on the Taiwanese government to clearly convey this message to TSMC. The outside world pays close attention to TSMC’s production trends in automotive wafers.

TSMC President Wei Zhejia pointed out at the Law Conference a few days ago that the auto market has been relatively weak since 2018, and the auto industry supply chain will be hit the hardest by COVID-19 (2019 novel coronavirus, commonly known as Wuhan pneumonia) in 2020. Customers in the third quarter of last year At times, demand continued to decline and TSMC only began to see a sudden recovery in the industry in the fourth quarter of last year.

Wei Zhejia pointed out that the automotive industry supply chain is long and complex. Last year, TSMC’s production capacity was tight due to strong demand from clients in other fields. Therefore, in the short term, due to the pick-up in demand in the automotive industry supply chain, the limited capacity supply will become more apparent.

Although automotive electronics applications only accounted for about 3% of TSMC’s sales in the fourth quarter of last year, the quarterly increase was the second largest among applications, with a quarterly increase of 27%; Last year, automotive electronics accounted for around 3% of TSMC’s Sales: a 7% decrease from the previous year.

Automotive chips mainly come from 8-inch wafer manufacturing, including CMOS image sensor components, power management chips, microcontrollers (MCUs), radio frequency, microelectromechanical (MEMS) components, power separation components, etc. , all of which are cars and electric vehicles Indispensable parts, look at the world’s top 8-inch wafer factories. Taiwan has TSMC, UMC, and the world’s outposts, while China has SMIC, Hua Hong Semiconductor, China Resources Micro, etc.

Industry sources noted that 8-inch wafer production capacity has long been overwhelmed, coupled with US sanctions on SMIC, has led to a major shortage of automotive chips, which are made primarily from 8-inch wafers. inches; about 80% of the silicon wafer area is used in vehicles. The chips are produced on the 8-inch wafer production line. Strong demand for electric vehicles and autonomous driving applications has driven the large increase in 8-inch wafer volume, and the 8-inch wafer factory has reached full capacity.

(Author: Zhongrong Feng; First Map Source: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company)

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