Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC)

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Type	Public limited (TWSE: 2330) (NYSE: TSM)
Industry	Semiconductors
Founded	1987 at the Industrial Technology Research Institute
Headquarters	Hsinchu Science Park in Hsinchu, Taiwan
Key people	Chairman and CEO: Dr Morris Chang, President: Dr. Rick Tsai,
Products	Silicon Wafers
Revenue	$13.982 billion (2010)[1]
Operating income	$4.444 billion (2009)[1]
Net income	$5.552 billion (2010)[1]
Total assets	$20.433 billion (2009)[1]
Total equity	$17.146 billion (2009)[1]
Employees	30,000+ (2010)
Website	www.tsmc.com

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Limited or TSMC (TWSE: 2330, NYSE: TSM) is the world's largest dedicated independent semiconductor foundry, with its headquarters and main operations located in the Hsinchu Science Park in Hsinchu, Taiwan.

Overview[link]

Founded in 1987, TSMC is the world's first dedicated semiconductor foundry.^[2] In addition to semiconductors, the company has also begun investing in lighting and solar energy-related industries.^[2] It is listed on both the Taiwan Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange. Dr. Morris Chang serves as Chairman and CEO, while Dr. F.C. Tseng serves as Vice Chairman and Dr. Rick Tsai serves as President of New Businesses.^[3]

Although TSMC offers a variety of wafer product-lines (high-voltage, mixed-signal, analog), TSMC is best known for its logic chip product line. Various fabless high-tech companies such as Applied Micro Circuits Corporation, Qualcomm, Altera, Broadcom, Conexant, Marvell, NVIDIA, and VIA are customers of TSMC. Some fab-owning companies like Intel also outsource some production to TSMC.^[4] At least one semiconductor company, LSI, re-sells TSMC wafers through its ASIC design services and design IP-portfolio.

TSMC's market capitalization reached a high in December 2010, reaching a value of NT$1.9 trillion (US$63.4 billion).^[5] In 2011, the company plans to increase research and development expenditures by almost 39% to NT$50 billion in an effort to fend off growing competition.^[6] The company also plans to expand capacity by 30% in 2011 to meet strong market demand.^[7]

On Friday, August 12, 2011, the partnership between TSMC and Apple was announced and TSMC has begun trial production of A5 (dual core) and A6 chip for Apple's next-generation iPads and iPhones.^[8][9]

Facilities[link]

• One 150 mm (6 inches) wafer fab in full operation (Fab 2)
• Four 200 mm (8 inches) wafer fabs in full operation (Fabs 3, 5, 6, 8)
• Two 300 mm (12 inches) wafer fabs in production (Fabs 12, 14)
• TSMC (Shanghai)
• WaferTech, TSMC's wholly owned subsidiary 200 mm (8 inches) fab in Camas, Washington, USA
• SSMC (Systems on Silicon Manufacturing Co.), a joint venture with NXP Semiconductors in Singapore which has also brought increased capacity since the end of 2002

TSMC announced plans to invest US$9.4 billion to build its third 12-inch (300 mm) wafer fabrication facility in Central Taiwan Science Park (Fab 15), which will use advanced 40 and 20-nanometer technologies.^[10] It is expected to become operational by March 2012. The facility will output over 100,000 wafers a month and generate $5 billion per year of revenue.^[11] On January 12, 2011, TSMC announced the acquisition of land from Powerchip Semiconductor for NT$2.9 billion (US$96 million) to build two additional 300 mm fabs to cope with increasing global demand.^[12] Further, TSMC has disclosed plans that it will build a 450-mm fab^[13], which may begin its pilot lines 2013, and production as early as 2015.^[14]

WaferTech subsidiary[link]

WaferTech, a subsidiary of TSMC, is a pure-play semiconductor foundry located in Camas, Washington, U.S.A. It is the largest pure-play foundry in the United States. The facility employs 1100 workers.

WaferTech was established in June 1996 as a joint venture with TSMC, Altera, Analog Devices, and ISSI as key partners. The four companies along with minor individual investors invested US$1.2 billion dollars into this venture, which was at the time the single largest startup investment in the state of Washington. The company started production in July 1998 in its 200 mm (8 inch) semiconductor fabrication plant. Its first product was a 0.35 micrometre part for Altera.

TSMC bought out the joint venture partners in 2000 and acquired full control, and currently operates it as a fully owned subsidiary.^[15]

WaferTech is based in Camas, 20 miles (30 km) outside of Portland, Oregon. The WaferTech campus contains a 1 million square foot (90,000 m²) complex housed on 260 acres (1 km²). The main fabrication facility consists of a 130,000 square feet (12,000 m²) 200 mm (8 inch) wafer fabrication plant.

TSMC Design Technology Canada[link]

TSMC Design Technology Canada has been a part of the TSMC family since August 1, 2007. It is Located at 349 Terry Fox Drive, Kanata, ON.

See also[link]

• Very-large-scale integration
• List of companies in Taiwan
• United Microelectronics Corporation
• GlobalFoundries
• List of Semiconductor Fabrication Plants

References[link]

• Altera Invests Additional $37.5M Into WaferTech Electronic News, 1998-12-07.
• McGrath, Dylan. WaferTech Ramps Ahead of Schedule Electronic News 1998-07-13.
• FWEE, Foundation for Water & Energy Education – Position of Power The Columbian, 2006-11-05. Discusses employment figures for WaferTech.

External links[link]

• WaferTech
• TSMC

ARM Holdings plc

Type	Public limited company
Traded as	LSE: ARM NASDAQ: ARMH
Industry	RISC Semiconductors Microprocessors
Founded	1990 (Cambridge)
Founder(s)	Robin Saxby, Jamie Urquhart, Mike Muller, Tudor Brown, Lee Smith, John Biggs, Harry Oldham, Dave Howard, Pete Harrod, Harry Meekings, Al Thomas, Andy Merritt, David Seal[1]
Headquarters	Cambridge, United Kingdom
Key people	Doug Dunn (Chairman) Warren East (CEO)
Products	Processor IP; Physical IP
Revenue	£491.8 million (2011)[2]
Operating income	£149.0 million (2011)[2]
Net income	£112.6 million (2011)[2]
Employees	2,000 (2012)[3]
Website	arm.com

The entrance to ARM1, one of the buildings on ARM's campus in Cambridge, England (52°10′54″N 0°10′42″E / 52.18177°N 0.17824°E / 52.18177; 0.17824)

Stitched panorama of building ARM I by architects Barber – Casanovas – Ruffles at Peterhouse Technology Park, Cambridge.^[4]

ARM Holdings plc (LSE: ARM, NASDAQ: ARMH) is a British multinational semiconductor and software design company headquartered in Cambridge. Its largest business is in processors, although it also designs software development tools under the RealView and Keil brands, systems and platforms, system-on-a-chip infrastructure and software. It is considered to be market dominant in the field of mobile phone chips and is arguably the best-known of the 'Silicon Fen' companies.^[5]

The company was founded as Advanced RISC Machines, ARM, a joint venture between Acorn Computers, Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) and VLSI Technology. The new company intended to further the development of the Acorn RISC Machine's RISC chip, which was originally used in the Acorn Archimedes and had been selected by Apple for their Newton project. The design was flexible and is now the processing core for many custom application-specific integrated circuits.

ARM Holdings has a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. It has a secondary listing on NASDAQ.

Name[link]

The acronym ARM, first used in 1983, originally stood for "Acorn RISC Machine." However, when the company was incorporated in 1990, the acronym was changed to stand for "Advanced RISC Machines" in the company name "Advanced RISC Machines Ltd." Then, at the time of the IPO in 1998, the company name was changed to "ARM Holdings".^[6]

History[link]

The Company was founded in November 1990 as Advanced RISC Machines Ltd and structured as a joint venture between Acorn Computers, Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) and VLSI Technology.^[7][8][9] Its first profitable year was 1993. The Company's Silicon Valley and Tokyo offices were opened in 1994. In 1997, ARM Holdings invested in Palmchip Corporation to provide a system on chip platforms and to enter into the disk drive market.^[10] In 1998 the Company changed its name from Advanced RISC Machines Ltd to ARM Ltd.^[11] The Company was first listed on the London Stock Exchange and NASDAQ in 1998.^[12] Apple's shareholding had fallen to 14.8% by February 1999.^[13]

In 1999, ARM acquired Micrologic Solutions, a software consulting company based in Cambridge.^[14] Further expansion followed in 2000 when ARM acquired Allant Software, a developer of debugging software;^[15] Infinite Designs, a design company based in Sheffield^[16] and EuroMIPS a smart card design house in Sophia Antipolis, France.^[17] In 2001, ARM acquired the engineering team of Noral Micrologics, a debug hardware and software company based in Blackburn, UK.^[18] The Company's China office was opened in 2002. In 2003, ARM acquired Adelante Technologies of Belgium, creating its OptimoDE data engines business, a form of lightweight DSP engine.^[19]

In 2004, ARM acquired Axys Design Automation, a developer of ESL design tools;^[20] and Artisan Components, a designer of Physical IP (standard cell libraries, Memory Compilers, PHYs etc.), the building blocks of integrated circuits.^[21] Further acquisitions followed in 2005 when ARM acquired KEIL Software, a leading developer of software development tools for the microcontroller market, including 8051 and C16x platforms.^[22] ARM also acquired the engineering team of PowerEscape. In 2006, ARM acquired Falanx (now called ARM Norway), a developer of 3D graphics accelerators,^[23] and SOISIC, who specialise in developing silicon-on-insulator physical IP.^[24] In 2010, ARM joined with IBM, Texas Instruments, Samsung, ST-Ericsson and Freescale Semiconductor in forming a Not For Profit Open Source engineering company, Linaro.^[25] In 2011, ARM bought Obsidian Software Inc., a privately held company that creates processor verification products.^[26] In November 2011, ARM acquired Prolific, a developer of automated layout optimisation software tools, and the Prolific team will join the ARM physical IP team.^[27]

Business model[link]

Unlike other microprocessor corporations such as AMD, Intel, Freescale (formerly Motorola) and Renesas (formerly Hitachi and Mitsubishi Electric),^[28] ARM only licenses its technology as intellectual property (IP), rather than manufacturing its own CPUs. Thus, there are a few dozen companies making processors based on ARM's designs. Intel, Samsung,^[29] Texas Instruments, Atmel, Freescale, Nvidia, Qualcomm and Renesas have all licensed ARM technology. In the fourth quarter of 2010, 1.8 billion chips based on an ARM design were manufactured.^[30]

ARM Holdings' strategy is by 2015 to have ARM-based processors in more than half of all tablets, mini-notebooks and other mobile PCs sold.^[31]

Operations[link]

The company has offices and design centres across the world, including San Jose, California, United States; Austin, Texas, United States; Olympia, Washington, United States; Trondheim, Norway; Sophia Antipolis, France; Munich, Germany; Taiwan; Yokohama, Japan; China; India; and Slovenia.^[32]

An ARM processor in a Hewlett-Packard PSC-1315 printer.

Technology[link]

A characteristic feature of ARM processors is their low electric power consumption, which makes them particularly suitable for use in portable devices.^[33] In fact, almost all modern mobile phones and personal digital assistants contain ARM CPUs, making them the most widely used 32-bit microprocessor family in the world. Today ARMs account for over 75% of all 32-bit embedded CPUs.^[34]

ARM processors are used as the main CPU for most mobile phones, including those manufactured by Apple, HTC, Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Samsung;^[35] many PDAs and handhelds, like the Apple iPod and iPad,^[36][37] Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS, Game Park GP32 and GamePark Holdings GP2X; as well as many other applications, including GPS navigation devices, digital cameras, digital televisions, network devices and storage.^[38] The WLAN processor of Sony's PlayStation Portable is an ARM9^[39]

Sales and market share[link]

This section requires expansion.

In 2010, over 6.1 billion ARM-based chips were sold, with a 55% unit increase from 2009.^[40] Here are ARM-based products' market share in different market segments in 2010: over 95% in smartphone market; 10% in mobile computers; 35% in digital TVs and set-top boxes; however, ARM did not have any market share in servers and desktop PCs.^[40]

With Microsoft's new ARM-based Windows 8 OS coming in 2012, market research firm IHS predicted that in 2015 23% of all the PCs in the world will use ARM processors.^[41]

In 2011, ARM's total revenue was $192 million in the third quarter, an increase of 22% compared to the same quarter of 2010, due to 28 new chip licensing revenue.^[42] ARM extends to server markets. HP will start producing servers using ARM-based chips in 2012.^[43] Also, Calxeda introduced the first ARM-based server chip in November 2011.^[44]

Partnerships[link]

Microsoft[link]

In 2011, Microsoft demonstrated Internet Explorer 10 at the MIX11 show in Las Vegas. For around 30 seconds of the 90-minute talk, they mentioned that some of the demos were running on an ARM computer.^[45] At 2011 CES, Microsoft revealed that Windows 8 operating system will break the x86 shackles and run on ARM architecture platforms.^[46] During Microsoft's presentation of Windows 8, a handful of the company's hardware partners showed off tablets and notebooks running the OS, including ARM Holdings instead of Intel and AMD.^[47]

University of Michigan[link]

In 2011, ARM renewed a five-year, $5 million research partnership with University of Michigan, which extended their existing research partnership to 2015. This partnership will focus on ultra-low energy and sustainable computing.^[48][49]

Senior management[link]

Warren East was appointed Chief Executive Officer of ARM Holdings in October 2001. In the 2011 financial year East received a total compensation of £1,187,500 from ARM, comprising a salary of £475,000 and a bonus of £712,500.^[50][51] President and co-founder, Tudor Brown, announced in November 2011 his planned retirement from ARM in 2012.^[52]

See also[link]

• ARM architecture

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: ARM Limited

• Official website

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