Our legal and commercial name is (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company
Limited). We believe we are currently the world’s largest dedicated foundry
in the semiconductor industry. We were founded in 1987 as a joint venture among
the R.O.C. government and other private investors and were incorporated in the
R.O.C. on February 21, 1987. Our common shares have been listed on the Taiwan
Stock Exchange since September 5, 1994, and our ADSs have been listed on the
New York Stock Exchange since October 8, 1997.
As a foundry, we manufacture semiconductors using our manufacturing processes
for our customers based on their own or third parties’ proprietary integrated
circuit designs. We offer a comprehensive range of wafer fabrication processes,
including processes to manufacture complementary metal oxide silicon (“CMOS”)
logic, mixed-signal, radio frequency (“RF”), embedded memory, bipolar
complementary metal oxide silicon (“BiCMOS”, which uses CMOS transistors
in conjunction with bipolar junction transistor) mixed-signal and other semiconductors.
We estimate that our revenue market segment share among total foundries worldwide
was 56% in 2017. We also offer design, mask making, bumping, probing, and assembly
and testing services.
We believe that our large capacity, particularly for advanced technologies,
is a major competitive advantage.
We count among our customers many of the world’s leading semiconductor
companies, ranging from fabless semiconductor companies, system companies to
integrated device manufacturers, including, but not limited to, Advanced Micro
Devices, Inc., Bitmain Technologies Limited, Broadcom Limited, Hisilicon Technologies
Co., Ltd., Intel Corporation, Marvell Technology Group Ltd., MediaTek Inc.,
NVIDIA Corporation, NXP Semiconductors N.V., Qualcomm Inc., Sony Corporation
and Texas Instruments Inc. Fabless semiconductor and system companies accounted
for approximately 80%, and integrated device manufacturers accounted for approximately
20% of our net revenue in 2017.
Mobile platform: We offer leading process technologies such as 7-nanometer
Fin Field-Effect Transistor (“FinFET”), 10-nanometer FinFET, 16-nanometer
FinFET Plus (“16FF+”) technology, and 20-nanometer system-on-chip
(“SoC”) logic process technologies, as well as comprehensive intellectual
properties for premium product applications to further enhance chip performance,
reduce power consumption, and decrease chip size. For low-end to high-end product
applications, we offer leading process technologies such as 12-nanometer FinFET
compact technology (“12FFC”), 16-nanometer FinFET compact technology
(“16FFC”), 28-nanometer high performance compact (“HPC”),
28-nanometer high performance mobile compact plus (“28HPC+”), and
22-nanometer ultra-low power (“22ULP”) logic process technologies,
in addition to comprehensive intellectual properties, to satisfy customer needs
for high-performance and low-power chips. Furthermore, for premium, high-end,
mid-end, and low-end product applications, we also offer the most competitive,
leading-edge specialty technologies, including radio frequency (“RF”),
embedded flash memory, emerging memory technologies, power management, sensors,
and display chips as well as advanced packaging technologies such as the leading
integrated fan-out (“InFO”) technology.
High-performance computing platform: We provide customers with leading process
technologies such as 7-nanometer FinFET and 16-nanometer FinFET(“16FF”),
as well as comprehensive intellectual properties, including high-speed interconnect
intellectual properties, to meet customers’ high-performance computing
and communication requirements. We also offer multiple advanced packaging technologies
such as chip on wafer on substrate (“CoWoS®”) and three-dimensional
integrated circuits technologies to enable homogeneous and heterogeneous chip
integration to meet customers’ performance, power, and system footprint
requirements. We will continue to optimize our high-performance computing platform
offerings to help customers capture market growth driven by data explosion and
application innovation.
Automotive electronics platform: We offer leading 7-nanometer FinFET, 16FF,
28-nanometer, and 40-nanometer logic process technologies, various leading and
competitive specialty technologies in RF, embedded flash memory, sensors, multiple
power management technologies that pass the AEC-Q100 qualifications.
Internet of things (“IoT”) platform: We provide industry’s
leading and comprehensive ultra-low power technology platform to support innovations
for IoT and wearable applications. Our leading offerings, including 55-nanometer
ULP, 40-nanometer ULP, 28-nanometer ULP, 22-nanometer ULP/ultra-low leakage
(“ULL”), have been widely adopted by various IoT and wearable applications.
We extend our offering with Near Threshold Voltage (“NVT”) technology
for extreme low power applications. We also offer the most competitive and leading-edge
specialty technologies in RF, embedded flash memory, emerging memory, sensors,
and display chips, as well as multiple advanced packaging technologies including
leading InFO technology.
Our Semiconductor Facilities
We currently operate one 150mm wafer fab, six 200mm wafer fabs, four 300mm
wafer fabs, and three advanced backend fabs. Our corporate headquarters and
seven of our fabs are located in the Hsinchu Science Park, one fab is located
in the Central Taiwan Science Park, three fabs are located in the Southern Taiwan
Science Park, one fab is located in the United States, one fab is located in
Shanghai, and one fab is located in Nanjing. Our corporate headquarters and
our seven fabs in Hsinchu occupy parcels of land of a total of approximately
627,111 square meters. We have leased these parcels from the Hsinchu Science
Park Administration in Hsinchu under agreements that will be up for renewal
between May 2019 and March 2037. We have leased from the Central Taiwan Science
Park Administration a parcel of land of approximately 564,619 square meters
for our Taichung fabs under agreements that will be up for renewal between September
2029 and December 2034. We have leased from the Southern Taiwan Science Park
Administration approximately 1,189,885 square meters of land for our fabs in
the Southern Taiwan Science Park under agreements that will be up for renewal
between April 2018 and July 2037. We also own approximately 143,215 square meters
of land located in Miaoli, Taiwan. WaferTech, LLC (“WaferTech”)
owns a parcel of land of approximately 1,052,186 square meters in the State
of Washington in the United States, where the WaferTech fab and related offices
are located. TSMC China owns the land use rights of 369,087 square meters of
land in Shanghai, where Fab 10 and related offices are located. TSMC Nanjing
owns the land use rights of 453,401 square meters of land in Nanjing, where
Fab 16 and related offices are located. Other than certain equipment under leases
located at testing areas, we own all of the buildings and equipment for our
fabs.
Semiconductor Manufacturing Capacity and Technology
We manufacture semiconductors on silicon wafers based on proprietary circuitry
designs provided by our customers or third party designers. Two key factors
that characterize a foundry’s manufacturing capabilities are output capacity
and fabrication process technologies. Since our establishment, we have possessed
the largest capacity among the world’s dedicated foundries. We also believe
that we are the technology leader among the dedicated foundries in terms of
our net revenue of advanced semiconductors with a resolution of 28-nanometer
and below, and are one of the leaders in the semiconductor manufacturing industry
generally. In 2017, we continued volume production of 10-nanometer technology,
successfully completed 7-nanometer technology qualification for volume production
and started full development of 5-nanometer technology.
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