ESMC in Dresden: These people are leading TSMC's expansion in Germany
The chip contract manufacturer TSMC is currently setting up ESMC in Dresden. The President made his first appearance at the Taiwan-EU Semiconductor Forum.
Clean room at a TSMC semiconductor plant in Taiwan. The chip contract manufacturer will also be operating in Germany from 2027.
(Image: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd.)
The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has chosen Dresden as the location for its first European semiconductor plant – known internally as Fab 24. Together with the manufacturers Bosch, Infineon and NXP, TSMC has founded the joint venture European Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (ESMC) for the construction and operation of the plant. Around 10 billion euros are being invested in the project, almost half of which is to come from the state.
Preparations are currently underway and the ground-breaking ceremony should take place by the end of the year. At the same time, ESMC is putting together its management team. Dr. Christian Koitzsch was already appointed head of the semiconductor plant in January 2024. His official job title at ESMC is President. He completed his Ph.D. in physics at the Swiss Université de Neuchâtel. Before joining ESMC, Koitzsch managed Bosch's semiconductor plant in Dresden for almost three years.
The move to ESMC is an obvious choice, as Bosch holds a ten percent stake in the joint venture. In addition, the ESMC fab is being built very close to the Bosch fab.
(Image: MIKA-fotografie | Berlin)
The first Taiwan-EU Semiconductor Forum took place in mid-June 2024, parallel to the first German Taiwan Expo. Koitzsch spoke there publicly for the first time as ESMC President.
The Taiwanese authorities obviously want to cultivate relations with Germany with such events after the TSMC settlement. Among others, James Huang was on site – Chairman of the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA), which also organizes the IT trade fair Computex.
(Image: MIKA-fotografie | Berlin)
45,000 m² of clean room space for lithography systems
In his speech, Koitzsch gave an insight into the plans for the Dresden plant. It is being built on an area of 200 m × 200 m. The construction workers are digging ten meters into the ground for the basement; the plant also rises 30 meters above the ground. In total, a clean room area of around 45,000 m² is being created.
Series production is scheduled to start at the end of 2027. As soon as all lithography systems are up and running in the semiconductor plant, ESMC plans to expose 40,000 wafers per month. ESMC's main focus is on chips for cars, so-called automotive semiconductors, with structure widths of 28, 22, 16 and 12 nanometers. These include microcontrollers for engine control units, infotainment and driver assistance systems as well as radar sensors. Infineon, for example, already has chips of this type manufactured by TSMC.
Koitzsch emphasized that these production stages can also produce modern technology (advanced semiconductors), although they have already been on the market for several years – in Taiwan, TSMC already manufactures with nominal 3 nm technology.
ESMC is also focusing on chips with innovative memory cells of the Resistive Random Access Memory (ReRAM) and Magnetoresistive Random Access Memory (MRAM) type. Unlike the caches in processors, ReRAM and MRAM are non-volatile. They therefore store data even when the car is switched off, without the need for separate flash components. The technology is in high demand from car manufacturers.
In some areas, ESMC is therefore competing with the Globalfoundries fab, which also produces in Dresden.
Taiwanese-German exchange of engineers
Once the semiconductor plant is completed, around 2,000 jobs will be created at ESMC, including numerous engineering positions. The company is already cooperating with TU Dresden to find suitable candidates and offer semiconductor-focused degree courses.
TSMC is already training the first people from Germany in Taiwan. This is standard practice at the chip contract manufacturer: in Taiwan, each guest is assigned an experienced engineer as a mentor.
The training takes place over several months in a training center at the semiconductor plant in Taichung. There, the engineers work in normal production so that they learn how to solve real problems and faults in chip production.
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Conversely, Taiwanese TSMC engineers also come to Germany with their families to accompany the set-up and the start of production. The first families have already arrived; in total, hundreds of people from Taiwan are expected to come to Dresden over the next three to five years.
Finding suitable personnel will be the task of TSMC's Gunnar Thomas over the next few years. He is General Counsel and heads TSMC's Human Resources (HR) in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region. At the Taiwan-EU Semiconductor Forum, Thomas expressed the hope of being able to recruit people from all over Germany and Europe.
(Image: MIKA-fotografie | Berlin)
According to him, preparations for the founding of ESMC have been underway for three years. The rumors about TSMC's European expansion, which first emerged at the end of 2021, are therefore not surprising.
(mma)