Page 17 - Semiconductors

Successful Examples

of Foreign Companies

External environmental factors have slowed the growth of the global
semiconductor industry slightly over the last two years, but foreign investment
in Taiwan's semiconductor industry is still continuing to increase. On the
semiconductor equipment side, ASML from the Netherlands, as well as Applied
Materials and Lam Research from the U.S., have all set up R&D centers or
training headquarters in Taiwan. On the electronic materials side, Merck from
Germany, Shin-Etsu Chemical and Tokyo Ohka Kogyo from Japan, as well as
Dow Chemical and Cabot Microelectronics from the U.S., have all built new
plants or expanded their operations in Taiwan. Key vendors such as Micron and
Qualcomm have all continued to increase their investments in Taiwan, as well.
Micron will expand its Center of Excellence for DRAM in Taiwan to make Taiwan
the only Micron production site with vertically integrated DRAM manufacturing,
packaging, and testing. Qualcomm will also establish the "Center for
Operations, Manufacturing, Engineering and Testing in Taiwan (COMET)"
in Hsinchu Science Park to serve as the hub of its Qualcomm Technologies
subsidiary. COMET will be responsible for overseas operations such as supply
chain, engineering, and business development, with an emphasis on stimulating
the development of Taiwan's semiconductor industry and the 5G mobile eco-
system.

Lam Research is planning to invest in semiconductor equipment
refurbishing and new equipment production lines in Taiwan as well, a move that
will expand their operations several-fold. On the software side, Synopsys has
invested more than NT$14.4 billion in Taiwan to date including research into
sub-micron EDA technology and EDA for advanced processes. In July 2019,
Synopsys also joined the Advanced Semiconductor Design Automation and AI
Chip R&D Partnership Program and expects to invest a further NT$800 million
over the next 2 years. Other well-known enterprises including Apple, Microsoft,
Google, IBM, Amazon, and AMD have all set up research centers, data
centers, or expanded their facilities in Taiwan based on Taiwan's success in the
semiconductor industry and its pool of talent.

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