Tensions between China and the United States are pushing some manufacturer companies to talk about moving some of their supply chain away from Taiwan as well, although it's “incremental,” the head of Taiwan's most important smartphone chip design firm told Reuters over the weekend.
Some of the "very large (equipment manufacturers) will
require their chip suppliers to have multiple sources, like from Taiwan and
from US, or from Germany or from Europe," said MediaTek Chief Executive
Rick Tsai. "I think in those cases, we will have to find multiple sources
for the same chip if the business warrants that."
It's happening already but not at large scale, he added.
Tsai and senior executives talked to Reuters on the
sidelines of a media and analyst event the company was hosting in California's
wine valley Sonoma Valley on Friday. The company has been pushing to grow its
US business, and Tsai said the goal was to triple or quadruple sales, although
he didn't give a time frame.
While MediaTek's most advanced smartphone chips are made at
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co in Taiwan, Tsai said some older
smartphone chips are made by GlobalFoundries Inc, which has factories in places
like the US and Singapore, and pointed to an announcement earlier this year to
make its chips at Intel's fabrication facilities.
Tsai said the "Intel 16" chip manufacturing
technology that MediaTek has committed to use fits well for producing MediaTek
chips for smart TVs and Wi-Fi. “It's a big business segment for us. So we're
not joking. And I'm supervising that progress myself every month,” said Tsai
adding that its chips will be made by Intel's Ireland fabrication facility from
the second half of 2024.
He said that MediaTek will also be producing chips in TSMC's
Arizona's lab when that is up and running, but cautioned that it wasn't
realistic for the chip industry to completely move away from Taiwan, the
world's most important region for advanced chip making.
“But is that going to be enough? No. Not by far,” he said. ©
Reuters