12-inch Wafer Gains More Opportunities for TSMC

When Texas Instruments Inc. (TI) is running through the global analog IC market with its 12-inch wafer plan, the non-TI camp recently has been thinking of the new strategies to respond to TI’s action. The 12-inche analog process plant of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is considered as the most powerful weapon to compete with TI. It is said that many big oversea analog IC manufactures except TI has gone to Taiwan to discuss with TSMC the possibility to make analog ICs by using 12-inch, 90nm and even 65nm processes.

People familiar with electronic component industry said, though the use of advanced production process lines is hard to make the miniature analog IC, and cannot get the direct benefit of the grain size miniature, other competitors have been forced to seek Foreign aid at the same time when TI is continue to advertise the 12-inche wafer.And TSMC is almost the only option for the Non- TI makers.

According to the Taiwan-based analog IC designers, because their special IC circuits and more prominent linear features, the analog ICs are also use the process shrink for cost reduction actions, although the action is actually very slow, and even some special and ultra-high pressure analog ICs are still using the 5 inches and 6-inch, 0.5-micron process.

Even if Taiwan companies in recent years are successionally changing to the 8-inche, 0.35-micron process, faster as Newtouch the change level is only at 30 percent, while RichTek is below 30 percent, and other Taiwan-based analog IC suppliers are even lower than 10 percent. Therefore, we can see that advanced IC process technology does not play an absolute positive role on whether the analog IC is able to win in the terminal market.

As the world’s leading foundry, together with the internal high voltage input and BiCMOS, TSMC is no doubt to be favored by the oversea analog IC manufacturers sooner or later. Thus, TI’s advertising actions for 12-Inch wafer is just making TSMC the beneficiary of such movements involving the 12-Inch wafer. Following the research and development movements of international analog IC manufacturers, Taiwan-based analog IC supplier is continuing to upgrade it IC production lines. The actions that moving the No.1 factory (6- inch plant) to other 8-inch plant having more advanced process makes the TSMC wins its way from 8-inch plant all the way straight to the 12-inch wafer area and even gains TSMC a complete victory in all analog IC suppliers both home and abroad that see TSMC triumphalist and the only technology partner.

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