In recent years, TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) has stepped up efforts to migrate advanced chip manufacturing processes overseas. Its investment in the United States has reached a staggering $165 billion, and future 2nm and 1.4nm processes will all be produced in the U.S.
Japan is TSMC’s second key overseas investment destination. A few years ago, TSMC built its first wafer fab in Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan, mainly producing chips using 28nm to 12nm processes. Recently, TSMC confirmed that an agreement for its second wafer fab in Japan has been reached, with operations expected to start in 2027.
The new fab will be located east of TSMC’s first Kumamoto fab, with a construction area of up to 69,000 square feet. It is expected to create over 1,700 jobs, bringing the total number of employees across the two fabs to approximately 3,400.
The chip manufacturing process of this new fab will see a significant upgrade, directly targeting the 6nm node. This process is mainly used in industries such as autonomous driving and artificial intelligence (AI), and is considered quite advanced on a global scale.
Previously, the most advanced chip process that could be produced locally in Japan was limited to the 28nm node. TSMC’s move will upgrade Japan’s local chip manufacturing capabilities by two to three generations.
Due to the significant process upgrade, the required investment has reached $13.9 billion (nearly RMB 100 billion). The total investment across the two fabs will amount to $22.5 billion, equivalent to 3.4 trillion yen in investment in Japan. In response, the Japanese government has provided substantial subsidies—the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) will contribute 1.2 trillion yen to support the fab construction.
(Reprinted from https://news.eccn.com/）