Showing growing confidence in the resurrection of the market of semiconductors, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company on Tuesday said that its board of directors had approved plans to expand existing manufacturing capacities and initiate building of a new fab in central Taiwan.

The board of directors approved capital appropriations of $1.0516 billion to expand advanced process capacity at Fab 12 and Fab 14. The expansion is projected to bring the total 300mm capacity of TSMC to 100 thousand wafers a month. In addition, the board approved capital appropriations of $321 million to expand and upgrade 200mm wafer fab capacity. Unfortunately, it is unknown when the expansions are projected to be completed. The additional fab, if construction is started in mid-2010, will come online sometime in 2013 – 2014.

Following the announced plan to build a yet another 300mm fab, TSMC’s directors also approved capital appropriations of $210 million to initiate buildind of Fab 15 in the Central Taiwan Science Park.

TSMC is the world's largest dedicated semiconductor foundry which operates a 150mm wafer fab (fab 2), five 200mm wafer fabs (fab 3, 5, 6, 8 and WaferTech) and two 300mm wafer “gigafabs” (fab 12 and 14). The latter two factories produce chips using so-called advanced process technologies, which are 130nm and below. About 71% of TSMC’s revenue comes from advanced fabrication processes and the demand is increasing quickly.

Tags: TSMC, Semiconductor