TSMC’s Technology Symposia, EUV Economics. Materials Outlook

G. Dan Hutcheson

The Chip Insider®

TSMC’s Technology Symposia: TSMC has hosted its annual technology tour-de-force in recent weeks. As for the live one in Santa Clara, I’m not sure who was more excited to be there: audience members like me or the TSMC executives. There was an air of excitement, confidence, and transparency among the executives I had not seen in public before. This was most notable in C.C. Wei’s presentations. TSMC even introduced a new meaning to the new word that is appearing in the English vocabulary this year: Phygital. A conjunction of Physical and Digital, Phygital is a term that emerged to describe the retail marketing strategy of merging these two worlds where consumers coinhabit. Apple was the first to use this strategy with its physical and digital stores and was also the first modern electronics manufacturer to recognize the value of being an integrated hardware and software manufacturer. The clear implication of TSMC’s use of the word was that integration scale is reaching down through devices and into the world of silicon, that what they bring to the world is more than the physical nature of a handheld device. It’s the raw physics of semiconductor process development merged through the digital world of EDA in a 3D layering with the hardware and software that makes up the device. I must be an odd ball, because I didn’t see anyone else in the media pick up on it. They were all focused on the amazing new technologies TSMC has in its pipeline, like N3, N3E, and N2 – which you can read about elsewhere. What wasn’t well covered was TSMC’s strategic shift in technology development that is now readily apparent.

For Your Reference: 2022 Semiconductor Materials Outlook — TECHCET latest forecast has materials growing another 8%

Comments, Questions & Answers: Regarding EUV is changing Fab Economics.

“Execution is Everything” — John Doerr