When Li Ta-sen was a little boy, he used to walk to school through fields of sugarcane taller than himself. Some 40 years later, he is making a living by selling off the same fields as property boom takes hold in his hometown of Shanhua.
The reason for the construction frenzy in the once shabby rural town in southern Taiwan is simple: The arrival of the world’s most advanced chip factory.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the largest contract chipmaker in the world, is building a plant to make 3 nanometre chips, semiconductors expected to be up to 70 per cent faster and more power-efficient than the most advanced in production now and which will be used in devices from smartphones to supercomputers.
“Prices for the adjacent agricultural land tripled last year, and we had the highest transaction volume in our 10-year history,” says Li, who runs the local branch of real estate broker Century 21, and has watched TSMC engineers snap up newly-built apartments and town houses.
But the impact of TSMC’s new fabrication plant, or “fab”, radiates far beyond southern Taiwan. In the world of semiconductors, this is the centre of the universe.
The plant, due to start mass production next year, will use process technology which so far only TSMC and South Korea’s Samsung Electronics have mastered at present, the most advanced chips are 5nm. The new chips bring huge advantages for customers: the smaller the transistors on a chip, the lower the energy consumption and higher the speed.
Measuring 160,000 square metres, the size of 22 football fields, the plant is commensurate with TSMC itself: a hulk with a stranglehold on global semiconductor manufacturing.
Normally a low-key company, TSMC’s massive investment in cutting-edge technology and growing influence are quietly drawing it into the limelight.
At a time when a global chip shortage has forced slowdowns or even suspensions of car production from Japan to Europe and America, and with politicians in many countries making noises about bringing more manufacturing onshore, the Taiwanese company’s dominant position in global chip production is attracting attention.
Given that China retains a standing threat of invasion of Taiwan, the country has long been at the centre of the military rivalry between Washington and Beijing in east Asia. But it is also increasingly being caught up in the technological competition between the two superpowers.
