TSM's 16nm chip manufacturing plant in Nanjing, China, will be ready and start production in May 2018, several months earlier than initially planned.

One of the most important companies in the semiconductor market, such as TSMC, will launch its 12-inch wafer factory in Nanjing, China, next May 2018, something that means that it will start up more than a quarter earlier. , according to the original schedule. This factory will have the mission to satisfy the strong demand of the Chinese market. This has been confirmed by Mark Liu, CEO of TSMC, who revealed it during the TSMC Annual Forum, which was held on December 7.

Construction of the Nanjing plant began in July 2016 and in September of this year the plant began to be moved and installed, which, according to initial forecasts, was scheduled to start up in the second half of 2018. The plant It will manufacture chips using the 16nm FinFET process, and the company will also establish a design service center in Nanjing to help Asian customers receive orders. Asian factories have 28nm as the most advanced manufacturing process, while 40nm and 55nm are the most popular, so TSMC's 16nm will be the most advanced in China and will allow them to acquire the entire portfolio of chip manufacturing under this process. .

This plant intends to acquire four leading platforms: high-performance computing, IoT, automotive electronics and mobile devices, which will serve as a boost for the future of the semiconductor industry, such as the fields of Artificial Intelligence and the transmission of data from high speed via 5G. In addition, they are working in negotiations with many clients for the development and manufacture of chips for Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, making use of the 12nm, 10nm and 7nm processes. Currently there are 300 million smartphones that are implementing the neural network technology associated with artificial intelligence.

Source: DigiTimes