14 DAY TRIAL // It seems that TSMC is quite bent on expanding its production capacity besides just advancing its existing nodes, as a recent report has revealed that the outfit decided to spend quite a bit of money on some acquisitions.
2011 will be a year of unusual happenings on the semiconductor markets, as DRAM and NAND, along with CPUs and GPUs, will have to bear with shifting consumer interest and enterprise needs.
Certain types of NAND Flash chips will see quite a level of success now that tablets and high-capacity smartphones are taking off, while DRAM is set to keep dropping in price.
Meanwhile, graphics processing units may or may not grow in shipments, but TSMC is not taking any chances with any of its chip manufacturing capabilities.
As revealed in a report by Digitimes, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company started off 2011 by buying land and fabs.
To be more specific, the outfit reached an agreement with Powerchip Technology, through which it will pay roughly NT$2.9 billion for a plot of land and an empty fab.
NT$2.9 billion is the equivalent of US$100 million, while the plot of land measures 218,156 square meters and is located in the Hsinchu Science Park (HSP), northern Taiwan.
Also, the aforementioned empty fab is built to make 12-inch wafers and was left idle after its shell construction was completed because of DRAM industry slowdown.
The rest of the land was supposed to eventually house yet another such facility, only its construction was delayed because of the same reason.
The other notable piece of information that the report contains is that TSMC intends to also allocate US1.1 billion on research and development spending in 2011.
That sum is quite a bit higher than the US$945 million allocated for 2010 and confirms the CEO's earlier announcement that the capex for the ongoing year would be higher than ever.