And not to be outdone by NEC, TSMC more than doubles its planned capital spending for 1999. :-)
May 27, 1999
Dow Jones Newswires
DJ Taiwan Semi To More Than Double '99 Capital Spending
By DAVID P. HAMILTON
SAN FRANCISCO -- Contract chip maker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSM) plans to more than double its 1999 capital investment, a company official said, in a firm vote of confidence that the semiconductor market is recovering.
TSMC, of Taiwan, had originally planned to invest only about $500 million in new chip making plant and equipment this year, said Magnus Ryde, president of TSMC's U.S. unit. But the company recently decided to expand its investment to $1.2 billion for the year, a sum that will allow it to break ground on a new factory in the Tainan industrial park in southern Taiwan.
TSMC will also invest in facilities in Hsinchu, near Taipei, in the U.S. and in a new joint venture production facility in Singapore, Ryde said.
As a result, TSMC plans to boost its production capacity to 1.9 million wafers in 1999, up from 1.2 million in 1998, Ryde said. Silicon wafers are processed in semiconductor facilities, where they are imprinted with circuit designs, then diced into individual chips.
TSMC, which recently unveiled an advanced manufacturing process - one capable of producing chip features as small as 0.18 microns, typical of the most advanced chip factories in the world - also continues to move ahead with other innovations, Ryde said. In particular, TSMC remains on track to start production using 12-inch wafers, which offer more than twice the surface area of today's eight-inch wafers, in mid-2001 at a new facility in Tainan.
-David P. Hamilton; 201-938-5099
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