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BEIJING, December 29 (TMTPOST)— Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), the world’s leading chip maker for other companies, is committed to expand capacity of advanced chips even the semiconductor industry has been weighed by increasing recession fears.

Source: TMTPost

TSMC announced to start mass production of 3-nanometer (nm) chips on Thursday, using the so called most advanced semiconductor technology across the globe. The industry is set to grow rapidly in the next decade, and demand for 3nm-chips would be “very strong”, said TSMC Chairman Mark Liu at a ceremony for increasing capacity that day. Liu called the high yield rate of 3nm chips at his company a success with no doubt. He expected the new 3nm technology to create end products with a total value of US$1.5 trillion in the coming five years.

Moreover, TSMC is preparing for making 2nm-chips at facilities in two Taiwan cities--Hsinchu and Tainan. Liu said the facility in Hsinchu would launch trial production for 2nm-chips with gate-all-around (GAA) architecture in 2024 and kick off mass production in 2025.

The mass production of 3nm chips confirms TSMC is gearing up on production of the next-generation chips that empower cutting-edge devices from iPhones, cloud data centers to supercomputers. Earlier this month, the Taiwan-based tech giant was said to start building a new fab to make 1nm-chips in Taiwan as early as in 2026 and begin bulk production in 2028.

When reporting the financial results for the third quarter in October, TSMC expected capital expenditure in the whole year to be US$36 billion, cutting by 20% from upper end of its original projection range. The chipmaker warned the semiconductor industry could fall into recession next year despite posting better-than-expected quarterly sales and earnings. To lower the projected capital expenditure mainly results from the sharper-than-expeccted semiconductor inventory adjustments and uncertain factors such as the elevated inflation, Russian-Ukraine war and the rate hikes by central banks, TSMC management noted in an earnings call. While the chip industry could be headed for recession in 2023, TSMC still see growth that year, driven by demand for advanced wafer technology in High-Performance Computing (HPC) segment, the chief executive C.C.Wei told analysts.