GlobalWafers Schedules $5 Billion Texas Plant Ground-breaking for November
GlobalWafers Chairman and CEO Doris Hsu advises reporters: Reutersthat construction Construction on the $5 billion manufacturing facility in Texas will begin in late November. Hsu said the factory will produce 300mm (12-inch) silicon wafers, a staple of the semiconductor industry. This will be the first silicon wafer facility built in the US in over 20 years, he said, and will be a key part of the now rapidly expanding ecosystem with the passage of the US Chip Act.
The GlobalWafers boss told reporters that the appeal of US Tipping Act funding is important, but not the only factor leading to the decision to open a large facility in Texas. “I think the US market is running out of silicon wafers. Carbon footprint, localization, green. When he talks about solutions, he thinks he needs local solutions,” Su told reporters. rice field. But the US has shown its favour, and GlobalWafers changed plans from Germany this summer (despite the EU tipping law).
A $5 billion semiconductor wafer fab doesn’t tell us much about the physical scale GlobalWafers plans. Thankfully, the company shared an overview of its plans with investors in June, and it looks like $5 billion will be enough to get it built. His 3.2 million square foot state-of-the-art 300mm silicon wafer fab in Sherman, Texas. This compares very well to his GlobalWafers’ existing Missouri fab, which is relatively small at 744,000 square feet, and produced a mix of 200 and 300mm wafers. The new Texas facility will also produce 1.2 million wafers per month and employ 1,500 staff when completed.
Other semiconductor industry developments in the United States
TSMC completed construction of Fab21 in Phoenix, Arizona in June. The last thing we heard was the preparation of the facility to move precision equipment critical to the company’s business. It has a monthly production capacity of about 100,000 pieces.
Micron broke ground on a $15 billion memory chip plant in Idaho on Monday. Ultimately, he expects the new fab to account for his 40% of global production.
Intel also recently started building a new chip manufacturing facility in the United States. The first of his two fabs in Ohio will cost Intel about $20 billion and is expected to go live in 2025.
A week or two before this rush of activity, I wrote a feature brief for the US Semiconductor Renaissance. It contains some information on the above and more information on Intel (New Mexico), Samsung, Texas Instruments, and GlobalFoundries.