Japan has put 37 billion yen on a bet that the next big leap in chips will happen after the silicon is cut, not before. On May 31, 2021, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry announced a research project with TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker. AFP put its value at $338 million.
The government will pay just over half, a METI official told AFP. The Asahi Shimbun gave the figure as 19 billion yen. Around 20 Japanese companies will work with TSMC, among them Ibiden, which is strong in substrate technology, and the equipment maker Shibaura Mechatronics. Benzinga, citing Nikkei, also named Shin-Etsu Chemical and Nagase.
What the money buys
The target is the back end of chipmaking, the stage where finished dies are cut and assembled into products. Within that, the focus is 3D packaging: stacking chips with different functions so that a small part delivers high performance. The timing is pointed. The project came as a global shortage hit everything from smartphones to game consoles to new cars. A U.S. cold snap, a drought in Taiwan and a fire at Renesas had made things worse, according to AFP.
The work will be based at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Tsukuba, near Tokyo. The Asahi reported that TSMC had already set up a wholly owned subsidiary in Japan in March, the TSMC Japan 3DIC R&D Center, and plans a research production line inside the institute’s clean room. Construction begins this summer. Full-scale research starts in 2022.
Materials makers at the table
Chemicals firms are part of the group. Asahi Kasei, Mitsui Chemicals and Sumitomo Chemical were named as participants. That matters because 3D assembly leans on specialised materials, and keeping that supply chain close to home is as much the point as the chips themselves.
The longer game
Tokyo’s motives are not hidden. With the U.S. and China locked in a technology contest, countries are scrambling to lock down supplies of leading-edge chips, the Asahi noted, and that is why the government was willing to cover half the bill to land TSMC. TSMC had already decided to build a plant in Arizona the year before. METI hopes the research base, and the joint work with Japanese firms, will eventually draw an actual manufacturing plant to Japan.
Sources
- Japan approves chip development project with TSMC (CGTN, with input from AFP)
- Asahi Shimbun, "Taiwan's TSMC to set up research base in Tsukuba, Japanese government to subsidize" (Japanese; English rendering follows the original)
- Japan Government Conceives $337M Chip Development Pact with TSMC, 20 Japanese Companies (Benzinga via Yahoo Finance, Anusuya Lahiri)
