Investment Competition
According to industry sources and Taiwanese media reports on June 20, Taiwan’s Science and Technology Minister Chen Liang-gee attended a Phison Electronics’ new semiconductor production facility groundbreaking ceremony held in Miaoli County in Taiwan on the 16th and said, “The Taiwanese government will invest NT$4 billion (US$131.38 million) over the next four years into the nation’s semiconductor industry.”
The U.S. Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) announced on June 16 that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) decided to invest US$288 million (320 billion won) to develop a next-generation supercomputer “Exascale” after selecting six companies such as Intel, IBM, AMD and Nvidia. SIA president and CEO John Neuffer said he will increase the total investments to US$430 million (491.02 billion won) by raising an additional 40 percent of project costs from participating companies.
In addition, China’s state-run China Development Bank (CDB) and China’s state-run semiconductor fund decided to invest 150 billion yuan (US$22 billion or 25.11 trillion won) in Tsinghua Unigroup in March. The Chinese government has been making an every effort to localize semiconductor chips for years now.
In South Korea, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (MOTIE) came up with a 464.5 billion (US$406.89 million) plan at the end of March to strengthen the competitiveness of the system semiconductor industry by making a public and private joint investment worth 264.5 billion won (US$231.73 million) in low-power, ultra-light and high-speed semiconductor chip development. However, some industry watchers say that the government should come up with a detailed measure to promote semiconductor fabless businesses which are relatively uncompetitive.