Established in 1987 and headquartered in Hsinchu Science Park, Taiwan, TSMC pioneered the pure-play foundry business model with an exclusive focus on manufacturing customers’ products. By choosing not to design, manufacture or market any semiconductor products under its own name, the Company ensures that it never competes with its customers.
And so, the key to TSMC’s success has always been to focus on its customers’ success. TSMC’s foundry business model has enabled the rise of the global fabless industry, and since its inception TSMC has been the world’s leading semiconductor foundry. The Company manufactured 11,617 different products using 281 distinct technologies for 510 different customers in 2020.
TSMC-made semiconductors serve a global customer base that is large and diverse and includes a wide range of applications. These products are used in a variety of end markets including mobile devices, high performance computing, automotive electronics and the Internet of Things (IoT). Such strong diversification helps to smooth fluctuations in demand, which in turn allows TSMC to maintain higher levels of capacity utilization and profitability, and generate healthy returns for future investment.
The annual capacity of the manufacturing facilities managed by TSMC and its subsidiaries exceeded 12 million 12-inch equivalent wafers in 2020. These facilities include four 12-inch wafer GIGAFAB® fabs, four 8-inch wafer fabs, and one 6-inch wafer fab – all in Taiwan – as well as one 12-inch wafer fab at a wholly owned subsidiary, TSMC Nanjing Company Limited, and two 8-inch wafer fabs at wholly owned subsidiaries, WaferTech in the United States and TSMC China Company Limited.
TSMC provides customer support, account management and engineering services through offices in North America, Europe, Japan, China, and South Korea. At the end of 2020, the Company and its subsidiaries employed more than 56,000 people worldwide.