China Taiwan wafer foundry PSMC has recently reached an agreement with the financial group SBI Holdings Co., Ltd. (SBI) to jointly build a 12-inch wafer foundry in Japan. PSMC will provide technology and personnel, SBI will be responsible for funding and finding a factory site, and the factory plans to seek subsidies from the Japanese government.
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The factory will produce processes and wafer stacking technologies above 22/28nm, which are mainly used in multiple markets derived from AI edge computing.
Yoshitaka Kitao, CEO of SBI Holdings, said the fab will start with 40nm and 55nm automotive-grade chips and industrial chips, and then expand to 28nm. SBI hopes to raise funds from around the world to support this new fab.
PSMC may have selected three or four sites as factory sites, and plans to start production two years after the plant opens.
At present, the specific details such as the mass production time, investment amount and monthly production capacity planning of the factory cannot be determined, and the two parties indicated that further discussions are needed.
In order to attract foreign semiconductor manufacturers to set up factories or expand production in Japan, the Japanese government has provided billions of dollars in subsidies. The Japanese government has pledged about $2.8 billion in aid for TSMC to build a plant in Kumamoto. It is reported that TSMC may also build a second advanced technology factory in Japan.
The Japanese government also provided Western Digital and Kioxia with a subsidy of approximately US$680 million to jointly build a NAND Flash flash memory factory in Japan. Kioxia was spun out of Japan's Toshiba Group, while Western Digital is an American computer drive maker and data storage company. Kioxia and Western Digital are accelerating merger negotiations and finalizing the transaction structure, which is currently in the final stages.