TSMC and partners will break ground in Dresden, Germany, to start building the Taiwanese chip maker's first European fab.

The groundbreaking ceremony will take place on August 20 and will feature TSMC Chairman and CEO C C Wei, fab customers, and government officials, the company confirmed to The Register.

"TSMC plans to hold the groundbreaking ceremony for the ESMC's fab in Dresden, Germany, on August 20," TSMC said in a statement. "This event represents a significant milestone for TSMC and our investment partners in the European semiconductor industry. The ESMC project is on track as planned, with construction expected to start by the end of 2024."

Despite being creatively titled ESMC (European Semiconductor Manufacturing Company), the facility is actually a collaboration between TSMC and three European processor firms: NXP, Infineon, and Bosch. Each partner owns 10 percent of the project and contributed half a billion euros to fund the fab's €10 billion budget.

The ESMC facility is intended for making older processors on the 28nm, 22nm, and 16nm/12nm nodes from TSMC, and is supposed to be capable of manufacturing 40,000 wafers a month when it's complete in 2027. These older process nodes cater to automotive and industrial applications, which prefer cheaper, tried-and-tested chips rather than the cutting edge.

However, processors out of ESMC might not be as cheap as similar ones from TSMC's Taiwan fabs. C C Wei said in April that overseas processors will be more expensive in exchange for "the flexibility of geopolitical location."

The progress TSMC and co are seemingly making on their Dresden fab is in sharp contrast to Intel's fab in Magdeburg, about 200 km away. Issues with receiving subsidies from Germany have previously slowed plans to start constructing Intel's cutting-edge fab. Most recently, Chipzilla discovered the site it chose had a plethora of black soil, which Intel is legally obligated to relocate and not simply dispose of. ®

https://www.theregister.com//2024/07/30/tsmc_breaks_ground_dresden/