Taiwan Semiconductor, Arizona discuss adding advanced chip packaging capacity - report
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Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (NYSE:TSM) and Arizona are in discussions about adding advanced chip packaging capacity to the company's facility in the state, Bloomberg News reported citing Governor Katie Hobbs.
Hobbs is part of a U.S. delegation visiting Taiwan, with discussions among officials and companies centered on Taiwan's role in the semiconductor supply chain, the report added.
Advanced packaging allows multiple devices, such as electrical, mechanical or semiconductor, to be merged and packaged as a single electronic device.
TSM has not announced plans to build facilities for advanced chip packaging in the U.S., according to a Reuters' report.
"Part of our efforts at building the semiconductor ecosystem is focusing on advanced packaging, so we have several things in the works around that right now," Hobbs said, as per the Reuters' report.
The company's commitment to Arizona now spreads across two fabs and $40B in investment and adding advanced packaging to these efforts would again raise the ceiling on what is possible to produce there, the Bloomberg report noted.
During the Q2 earnings call in July, TSM noted that it was pushing back the start of production from the new plant to 2025, from 2024, in part due to insufficient amount of skilled workers needed for equipment installation.
Packaging has become an obstacle in the fabrication of the most in-demand silicon today, Nvidia's (NVDA) artificial intelligence, or AI, accelerators, made by TSM. The company has pledged to expand its packaging capacity in Taiwan, but anticipates supplies to be tight for another 18 months, said Chairman Mark Liu at Semicon earlier this month, according to the Bloomberg report.
In December, TSM had said that it would offer more advanced 4-nanometer chips from its Arizona plant, at the request of one of its biggest customers, Apple (AAPL), the report added.
Liu had said during the Q2 earnings call that TSM had been sending technicians from Taiwan to train the local skilled workers, but for a short period of time the company expects the production of the N4 process technology to be pushed out to 2025.
Arizona and TSM are "working through some bugs," Hobbs said, but she is "very impressed by the speed with which it has been built" and the project continues on schedule, the Bloomberg report noted.

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