Slowing down in the electronic chip race, Sony shakes hands with TSMC ambition to ‘change the game’

According to Reuters news agency, Taiwan’s TSMC, the world’s leading chip maker, recently accepted to cooperate with Japan’s Sony in building a factory in the land of the rising sun.

Specifically, the Japanese government will support half of the 800 billion yen, equivalent to 7.15 billion USD, for the cooperation to open this factory to pursue the chip development strategy that is lagging behind. .

This factory will be built in Kumamoto Prefecture, on land owned by Sony and located right next to its image sensor factory. This project is expected to produce semiconductor devices for the automotive industry, camera sensors as well as other products affected by the current chip shortage crisis.

However, the plant can only come into operation from 2024.

Neither Sony nor TSMC have yet to comment, but TSMC said in July 2021 that it was considering building a factory in Japan. TSMC is currently the world’s largest contract chip manufacturer and a strategic supplier to Apple.

However, it is not clear what kind of chip Apple will be produced at the factory in Japan. Sony is also a big customer and it is likely that they will prioritize making their own chips at this factory.

According to Reuters, TSMC is currently quite concerned about its ability to ensure chip production capacity in Taiwan, which is home to most of the world’s most advanced chips today.

Meanwhile, Japan is concerned about the stability of the global supply chain because of the lack of processor chips. In particular, the fact that Japan lags behind in the race of semiconductor technology, especially in the field of electronic chips compared to China and the US, has promoted this deal.