TSMC plans to invest 2.8 billion dollars in China to increase the production of semiconductor chips used in automobiles, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) said.
Worldwide auto unit sales grew 3% in 2021, buoyed by a strong recovery in final demand but capped by unexpected chip shortages and supply chain disruptions caused by several natural disasters, including a snowstorm in Texas, a fire accident in Japan, as well as the resurgence of Covid-19 in Southeast Asia.
In 2022, global auto unit sales are expected to post high- to low-single-digit growth driven by pent-up demand, improving semiconductor supply and better supply chain management.
The entire automotive industry is moving in a «greener, safer, and smarter» direction, which will accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles (EVs), advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), and intelligent infotainment systems.
All of this will lead, according to TSMC, to increased demand for AP/MCU/ASIC processors, in-car networks, sensors, and power management ICs, which will continually increase the silicon content per car.
TSMC offers a wide variety of process technologies to enable customers to offer competitive products in the automotive market.
TSMC
This company‘s automotive platform provides a full spectrum of technologies and services to support the three megatrends (safer, smarter and greener) in the automotive industry.
TSMC is also an industry leader in providing a robust automotive IP ecosystem, covering 16nm FinFET and 7nm FinFET technologies and extending to 5nm FinFET technology, for advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), infotainment in-vehicle technology (IVI), as well as zonal controllers for the new electrical/electronic (E/E) architecture for the automotive industry.
In addition to its advanced logic platform, TSMC offers a wide range of competitive specialty technologies, including 28nm embedded flash memory, 28nm, 22nm and 16nm mmWave RF, CMOS Image/LiDAR (light detection and ranging) sensors High sensitivity and power management.
Magnetic Random Access Memory (MRAM), an emerging technology, has demonstrated automotive grade 1 capability at 22nm and is under development with good progress at 16nm to meet automotive grade 1 requirements.
All of these automotive technologies apply to TSMC’s automotive process qualification standards based on AEC-Q100 standards or meeting customers’ technology specifications.