Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited manufactures semiconductors using its manufacturing processes for its customers based on proprietary integrated circuit designs provided by them.
The company offers a comprehensive range of wafer fabrication processes, including processes to manufacture complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (‘CMOS’) logic, mixed-signal, radio frequency (‘RF’), embedded memory, bipolar complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (‘BiCMOS’, which uses CMOS transist...
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited manufactures semiconductors using its manufacturing processes for its customers based on proprietary integrated circuit designs provided by them.
The company offers a comprehensive range of wafer fabrication processes, including processes to manufacture complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (‘CMOS’) logic, mixed-signal, radio frequency (‘RF’), embedded memory, bipolar complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (‘BiCMOS’, which uses CMOS transistors in conjunction with bipolar junction transistors), mixed-signal, and others. The company also offers design, mask making, TSMC 3DFabric advanced silicon stacking and packaging technologies, and testing services.
The company counts among its 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., Amazon Web Services, Inc., Broadcom Inc., Intel Corporation, MediaTek Inc., NVIDIA Corporation, NXP Semiconductors N.V., Qualcomm Inc., Renesas Electronics Corporation, and Sony Semiconductor Solutions Corporation.
Semiconductor Manufacturing Capacity and Technology
The company manufactures semiconductors on silicon wafers based on proprietary circuitry designs provided by its customers. Two key factors that characterize a foundry’s manufacturing capabilities are output capacity and fabrication process technologies. Since the company’s establishment, it has built a strong position in manufacturing capacity as a dedicated foundry. The company’s 3-nanometer technology successfully entered volume production in 2022. Additionally, the development of its 2-nanometer technology is on track, and its volume production is expected in 2025.
In 2024, the company’s annual capacity (in 12-inch equivalent wafers) was approximately 17 million wafers.
Markets and Customers
The company provides worldwide customer support. Its office in Hsinchu and subsidiaries in the United States, Canada, Japan, China, Germany, the Netherlands, and South Korea are dedicated to serving its customers worldwide. Foundry services, which are both technologically and logistically intensive, involve frequent and in-depth interaction with customers. The company’s customer service and technical support managers work closely with the sales force to offer integrated services to customers. To facilitate customer interaction and information access on a real-time basis, a suite of web-based applications has also been offered to provide more active interactions with customers in design, engineering, and logistics.
Foundry Services
Range of Services: Because of the company’s ability to provide a full array of services, it is able to accommodate customers with a variety of needs at every stage of the overall foundry process. The flexibility in input stages allows the company to cater to a variety of customers with different in-house capabilities, and thus to service a wider class of customers as compared to a foundry that cannot offer design or mask-making services, for example. As the company serves a large global customer base that entails a wide range of applications, such customer diversification helps to smooth fluctuations in demand.
Fabrication Processes: The company manufactures semiconductors mainly using the CMOS process. The CMOS process is currently the mainstream semiconductor manufacturing process. It uses the CMOS process to manufacture logic semiconductors, mixed-signal/radio frequency semiconductors, which combine analog and digital circuitry in a single semiconductor, micro-electro-mechanical systems (‘MEMS’), which combine micrometer-featured mechanical parts, analog and digital circuitry in a single semiconductor, and embedded memory semiconductors, which combine logic and memory in a single semiconductor, etc.
Types of Semiconductors Manufactured: The company manufactures different types of semiconductors with different specific functions by changing the number and the combinations of conducting, insulating, and semiconducting layers, and by defining different patterns in which such layers are applied on the wafer. At any given point in time, there are thousands of different products in various stages of fabrication at the company’s fabs. Its semiconductors are used for a variety of different platforms. The principal platforms include:
High Performance Computing (‘HPC’): Driven by data explosion and AI application innovation, HPC has become the key growth driver for the company’s business. The company provides customers, including both fabless IC design companies and system companies, with leading-edge logic process technologies, such as 2-nanometer Nanosheet Transistor (‘N2’), 3-nanometer Fin Field-Effect Transistor (‘FinFET’), 4-nanometer FinFET, 5-nanometer FinFET, 6-nanometer FinFET, and 7-nanometer FinFET, as well as comprehensive intellectual properties, including high-speed interconnect intellectual properties, to meet customers’ product requirements for transferring and processing vast amounts of data anywhere at any time. Specifically, the company introduced its HPC-focused technologies, N4X and N3X, representing the ultimate performance and maximum clock frequencies in its 5-nanometer and 3-nanometer families, respectively. Based on advanced process nodes, a variety of HPC products have been launched, such as AI accelerators, including AI graphics processor units (‘GPUs’) and AI application-specific integrated circuits (‘ASICs’), personal computer central processing units (‘CPUs’), consumer GPUs, field programmable gate arrays (‘FPGAs’), server processors, and high-speed networking chips, etc. These products can be used in current and future 5G/6G infrastructures, AI, Cloud, and enterprise data centers. The company also offers multiple TSMC 3DFabric advanced silicon stacking and packaging technologies, such as System on Integrated Chip (‘TSMC-SoIC’) manufacturing service, and Integrated Fan-Out (‘InFO’) and Chip-on-Wafer-on-Substrate (‘CoWoS’) advanced packaging service, to enable homogeneous and heterogeneous chip integration to meet customer requirements for high performance, high compute density, high energy efficiency, low latency, and high integration.
Smartphones: For customers’ premium product applications, the company offers leading logic process technologies, such as 2-nanometer Nanosheet plus (‘N2P’), 3-nanometer FinFET enhanced (‘N3E’), 3-nanometer FinFET, 4-nanometer FinFET plus (‘N4P’), 4-nanometer FinFET, 5-nanometer FinFET plus (‘N5P’), and 5-nanometer FinFET, as well as comprehensive intellectual properties to further enhance chip performance, reduce power consumption, and decrease chip size. For mainstream product applications, the company offers a broad range of logic process technologies, including 4-nanometer FinFET compact (‘N4C’), 6-nanometer FinFET, 7-nanometer FinFET plus (‘N7+’), 7-nanometer FinFET, 12-nanometer FinFET compact plus (‘12FFC+’), 12-nanometer FinFET compact (‘12FFC’), 16-nanometer FinFET compact plus (‘16FFC+’), 16-nanometer FinFET compact (‘16FFC’), 28-nanometer high performance compact plus (‘28HPC+’), 28-nanometer high performance compact (‘28HPC’), and 22-nanometer ultra-low power (‘22ULP’), in addition to comprehensive intellectual properties, to satisfy customer needs for high-performance and low-power chips. Furthermore, for both premium and mainstream product applications, the company offers leading-edge, highly competitive specialty technologies to deliver specialty companion chips for customers’ logic application processors, including radio frequency (‘RF’), RF front-end, embedded non-volatile memory, power management ICs (‘PMICs’), sensors, and display chips, as well as TSMC 3DFabric advanced packaging technologies, such as industry-leading InFO technology.
Internet of Things (‘IoT’): Following the three megatrends of the IoT segment, ‘Everything Connected, Smart, and Green,’ the company not only provides customers with solid logic technologies, including 5-nanometer, 6-nanometer, 7-nanometer, 12-nanometer, 16-nanometer, and 28-nanometer, but also builds a leading, complete, and highly integrated ultra-low power (‘ULP’) technology platform based on its logic technologies to enable customers’ product innovations for the artificial intelligence of things (‘AIoT’, AI + IoT). The company’s industry-leading ULP technologies, including the new FinFET-based 6-nanometer technology (‘N6e’) and 12-nanometer technology (‘N12e’), feature both energy efficiency and high performance. These technologies provide more computing power and AI inferencing capability while reducing system power consumption. In addition, the planar transistor-based mainstream technologies, such as 22-nanometer ultra-low leakage (‘ULL’), 28-nanometer ULP, 40-nanometer ULP, and 55-nanometer ULP technologies, have been widely adopted by various IoT system-on-a-chip (‘SoC’) and battery-powered products to extend battery life. The company’s ULP technology platform also provides customers with comprehensive specialty technologies, covering RF, enhanced analog devices, embedded non-volatile memory, sensors, display devices, and PMICs. For extreme low power product application requirements, the company has also extended its low operating voltage (‘Low Vdd’) offerings and has provided simulation programs with integrated circuit emphasis (‘SPICE’) models with wide-range operating voltages and design guidelines to lower the adoption barrier and reduce lead time to help customers successfully launch innovative products.
Automotive: The company offers a comprehensive spectrum of technologies and services to support the automotive industry’s three megatrends – building vehicles that are ‘Safer, Smarter, and Greener.’ It is also an industry leader in providing a robust automotive intellectual property ecosystem, which covers 5-nanometer FinFET, 7-nanometer FinFET, and 16-nanometer FinFET technologies, for advanced driver-assistance systems (‘ADAS’), advanced in-vehicle infotainment (‘IVI’), as well as zonal controllers for new electrical/electronic (‘E/E’) architectures in next-generation vehicles, including internal combustion engines (‘ICEs’) and electric vehicles (‘EVs’). In 2023, the company introduced its 3-nanometer Auto Early (‘N3AE’) program, providing automotive process design kits (‘PDKs’) to support automotive customers. N3AE has since migrated to N3A, with V0.9 PDK released in 2024 to support customers in designing automotive application products early on. In addition to the company’s advanced logic platform, it offers a broad array of competitive automotive-grade specialty technologies, including 28-nanometer embedded flash memory, 28-, 22-, and 16-nanometer millimeter wave (‘mmWave’) RF, high dynamic range (‘HDR’), high sensitivity CMOS image sensor (‘CIS’)/light detection and ranging (‘LiDAR’) sensors, and PMICs. The emerging technology of magnetoresistive random access memory (‘MRAM’) demonstrated automotive Grade-1 capability on 22-nanometer and passed automotive Grade-1 requirements on 16-nanometer in 2023. All these technologies have been applied to the company’s automotive process qualification standards based on AEC-Q100 standards of the Automotive Electronic Council (‘AEC’) and/or meeting customers’ technology specifications.
Digital Consumer Electronics (‘DCE’): The company provides customers with leading, comprehensive technologies to deliver AI-enabled smart devices for DCE applications, including smart digital TVs (‘DTVs’), set-top boxes (‘STBs’), AI-embedded smart cameras, and associated wireless local area networks (‘WLANs’), PMICs, and timing controllers (‘T-CONs’). The company’s leading 6-nanometer FinFET, 7-nanometer FinFET, 16FFC/12FFC, 22ULP/22ULL, and 28HPC+ technologies have been widely adopted by leading global makers of 8K/4K DTVs, and STBs, 4K streaming media devices (‘SMDs’)/over-the-top (‘OTT’), digital single-lens reflex (‘DSLR’) cameras, and so on. The company will continue to make these technologies more competitive through design-technology co-optimization (‘DTCO’) for customers’ digital intensive chip designs and to drive lower power consumption for more cost-effective packaging.
Design and Technology Platforms: Modern integrated circuit designers need sophisticated design infrastructure to optimize productivity and cycle time. Such infrastructure includes design flow for electronic design automation (‘EDA’), silicon proven building blocks, such as libraries and intellectual properties, simulation and verification design kits, such as PDK and technology files. All of this infrastructure is built on top of the technology foundation, and each technology needs its own design infrastructure to be usable for designers. This is the concept of the company’s technology platforms.
For years, the company and its alliance partners have spent considerable effort, time, and resources to build its technology platforms. The company unveiled an Open Innovation Platform (‘OIP’) initiative in 2008 to further enhance its technology offerings. More OIP deliverables were introduced over the years, as well as in 2024. In the design methodology area, the company announced EDA and intellectual property readiness of 2-nanometer and 3-nanometer, as well as continuous development of solutions to enhance power, performance, and area (‘PPA’) on existing production technology nodes. In addition, the company also announced the openness of the 3Dblox Standard to the semiconductor industry, as well as the availability of various 3-Dimensional Integrated Circuit (‘3DIC’) reference flows to support TSMC 3DFabric technologies in 3D silicon stacking and advanced packaging, which cover a wide range of system-level design applications.
Multi-project Wafer Program (‘CyberShuttle’): To help its customers reduce costs, the company offers a dedicated multi-project wafer processing service that allows it to provide multiple customers with circuits produced with the same mask. This program reduces mask costs by a very significant amount, resulting in accelerated time-to-market for its customers. The company has extended this program to all of its customers and library and intellectual property partners using its broad selection of process technologies, ranging from the latest 2-, 3-, 4-, 5-, 6-, 7-, 12-, 16-, 22-, 28-, 40-, 45-, 55-, 65-, and 90-nanometer processes to 0.13-, 0.18-, 0.25-, 0.35-, and 0.5-micron. This extension offers a routinely scheduled multi-project wafer run to customers on a shared-cost basis for prototyping and verification.
The company developed its multi-project wafer program in response to the current SoC development methodologies, which often require the independent development, prototyping, and validation of several intellectual properties before they can be integrated onto a single device.
Customer Service
The key elements are the company’s: customer-oriented culture through multi-level interaction with customers; ability to deliver products of consistent quality, competitive ramp-up speed, and fast yield improvement; responsiveness to customers’ issues and requirements, such as engineering change and special wafer handling requests; flexibility in manufacturing processes, supported by the company’s competitive technical capability and production planning; dedication to help reduce customer costs through collaboration and services, such as the company’s multi-project wafer program, which combines multiple designs on a single mask set for cost-saving; and availability of the company’s online service, which provides necessary information in design, engineering, and logistics to ensure seamless services to its customers throughout the product life cycle.
The company also conducts an annual customer satisfaction survey to assess customer satisfaction and to ensure that their needs are adequately understood and addressed. Continuous improvement plans based upon customer feedback are an integral part of this business process. The company uses data derived from the survey as a base to identify future focus areas.
Research and Development
In 2024, the company spent NT$204,182 million (US$6,227 million) on research and development.
Equipment
The principal pieces of equipment used by the company to manufacture semiconductors are scanners, cleaners and track equipment, inspection equipment, etchers, furnaces, wet stations, strippers, implanters, sputterers, chemical vapor deposition (‘CVD’) equipment, chemical mechanical polish (‘CMP’) equipment, testers, and probers. Other than certain equipment under leases located at testing areas, the company owns all of the equipment used at its fabs.
Environmental and Climate-Related Laws and Regulations
Operations at the company’s fabs are subject to regulations and periodic monitoring by the R.O.C. Ministry of Environment, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the State Environmental Protection Administration of China, the Japan Ministry of the Environment, the European Environment Agency and European Chemicals Agency, and local environmental protection authorities in Taiwan, the U.S., China, Japan, and Germany.
The company has two key management platforms: the ESG Steering Committee and the ESG Committee.
Subsidiaries and Affiliates
Vanguard International Semiconductor Corporation (‘VIS’): In 1994, the company, the R.O.C. Ministry of Economic Affairs, and other investors established VIS, then an integrated dynamic random access memory (‘DRAM’) manufacturer. VIS commenced commercial production in 1995 and listed its shares on the Taipei Exchange (originally the R.O.C. Over-the-Counter Securities Exchange) in March 1998. In 2004, VIS completely terminated its DRAM production and became a dedicated foundry company. In October 2024, the company acquired additional shares in VIS’ capital increase transaction. As of February 28, 2025, the company owned approximately 27.6% of the equity interest in VIS.
TSMC Washington, LLC (‘TSMC Washington’, previously WaferTech, LLC (‘WaferTech’)): In 1996, the company entered into a joint venture called WaferTech (of which the manufacturing entity is Fab 11) with several U.S.-based investors to construct and operate a foundry in the United States. Initial trial production at WaferTech commenced in July 1998, and commercial production commenced in October 1998. In December 2023, WaferTech was renamed as TSMC Washington. As of February 28, 2025, the company owned 100% of the equity interest in TSMC Washington.
TSMC Global Ltd. (‘TSMC Global’): In December 1998, the company established TSMC Holding Ltd. in the B.V.I. as a company with limited liability. In 2006, TSMC Holding Ltd. was renamed to TSMC Global Ltd. TSMC Global is a wholly-owned subsidiary primarily engaged in corporate treasury investment activities.
Systems on Silicon Manufacturing Company Pte. Ltd. (‘SSMC’): In March 1999, the company entered into an agreement with Koninklijke Philips NV (‘Philips’) and EDB Investment Pte. Ltd. (‘EDB’) to found a joint venture, SSMC, and build a fab in Singapore. The SSMC fab commenced commercial production in December 2000. As of February 28, 2025, the company owned approximately 38.8% of the equity interest in SSMC.
Global Unichip Corporation (‘GUC’): In January 2003, the company acquired a 52.0% equity interest in GUC, a SoC design service company that provides large scale SoC implementation services. GUC listed its shares on the Taiwan Stock Exchange in November 2006. As of February 28, 2025, the company owned approximately 34.8% of the equity interest in GUC.
TSMC China: In August 2003, the company established TSMC China (of which the manufacturing entity is Fab 10), a wholly-owned subsidiary primarily engaged in the manufacture and sale of integrated circuits. TSMC China commenced commercial production in late 2004.
VisEra Technologies Company, Ltd. (‘VisEra Technologies’): In October 2003, the company and OmniVision Technologies Inc. (‘OVT’) entered into an agreement to form VisEra Technologies, a joint venture in Taiwan, for the purpose of providing back-end service for the CMOS image sensor manufacturing business. In November 2015, the company acquired all of OVT’s equity interest in VisEra Technologies. In March 2021, the company disposed of certain common shares of VisEra Technologies to facilitate its initial public offering (‘IPO’). Immediately following VisEra Technologies’ IPO in June 2022, the company’s shareholding was diluted to approximately 67.9%. As of February 28, 2025, the company owned approximately 67.3% of the equity interest in VisEra Technologies.
Xintec, Inc. (‘Xintec’): In January 2007, the company acquired a 51.2% equity interest in Xintec, a supplier of wafer-level packaging service, to support the company’s CMOS image sensor manufacturing business. In March 2015, Xintec listed its shares on the Taipei Exchange. Subsequent to Xintec’s IPO, the company’s shareholding in Xintec was diluted to approximately 41.2%. As of February 28, 2025, the company owned approximately 41.0% of the equity interest in Xintec.
TSMC Nanjing: In May 2016, the company established TSMC Nanjing (of which the manufacturing entity is Fab 16), a wholly-owned subsidiary primarily engaged in the manufacture and sale of integrated circuits. TSMC Nanjing commenced commercial production in April 2018.
TSMC Arizona: In November 2020, the company established TSMC Arizona (of which the manufacturing entity is Fab 21), a wholly-owned subsidiary that is expected to be primarily engaged in the manufacture and sale of integrated circuits. TSMC Arizona plans to build and operate multiple advanced semiconductor manufacturing facilities in Phoenix, Arizona. Construction on the first facility commenced in April 2021, and volume production commenced by the end of 2024. In December 2022, the company announced a plan for TSMC Arizona to build and operate a second semiconductor manufacturing facility, which is currently under construction. In April 2024, the company further announced a plan for TSMC Arizona to build and operate a third semiconductor manufacturing facility.
JASM: In December 2021, the company established JASM (of which the manufacturing entity is Fab 23), which is expected to be primarily engaged in the manufacture and sale of integrated circuits. In January 2022, Sony Semiconductor Solution Corporation (‘Sony’) acquired a less than 20% equity interest in JASM. In April 2022, DENSO Corporation (‘DENSO’) acquired a more than 10% minority equity interest in JASM. At the time of establishment, JASM planned to build and operate a semiconductor manufacturing facility in Kumamoto, Japan. Construction on the site commenced in April 2022, and volume production commenced in December 2024. In February 2024, the company, Sony, DENSO, and Toyota Motor Corporation (‘Toyota’) announced further investment into JASM to build and operate a second semiconductor manufacturing facility. By way of such investment, Toyota also took a minority stake in JASM. As of February 28, 2025, the company owned approximately 72.6% of the equity interest in JASM.
ESMC: In June 2023, the company established ESMC, which is expected to be primarily engaged in the manufacturing and sale of integrated circuits. In January 2024, Robert Bosch GmbH, Infineon Technologies AG, and NXP Semiconductors Germany GmbH, a wholly-owned subsidiary of NXP Semiconductors N.V. (‘NXP’), each acquired a 10% equity interest and together acquired a 30% equity interest in ESMC. ESMC plans to build and operate a semiconductor manufacturing facility in Dresden, Germany. Construction on the site commenced in 2024. As of February 28, 2025, the company owned 70.0% of the equity interest in ESMC.
Trademark
‘TSMC’, ‘tsmc’, ‘jasm’, ‘esmc’, ‘Open Innovation Platform’, ‘CyberShuttle’, ‘CoWoS’, ‘TSMC-SoIC’, ‘3DFabric’, ‘N6e’, and ‘N12e’ are some of the company’s registered and/or pending trademarks used by the company in various jurisdictions, including the United States of America.
History
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited, a Republic of China corporation, was founded in 1987. The company was incorporated in 1987.
