TSMC to open up chip design center in Munich to help local chip developers

TSMC is set to open its first chip design center in Munich, Germany, in a bid to help local and European chip developers optimize their designs to its process technology, the company announced at its European Technology Symposium in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

The facility in Munich will perform multiple functions to simplify the implementation of chips on its process technologies, as well as helping partners on system-level design. Essentially, the center's competencies will span from basic assistance in the development of tiny microcontroller units (MCUs) made using mature process technologies for the automotive industry to design technology optimization (DTCO) of advanced processors for AI and HPC applications that rely on leading-edge production nodes.

"We want to bring the best support to the European customer," said Kevin Zhang, Deputy Co-COO and Senior Vice President of Business Development and Global Sales, at the event. "Here we want to have the design team to be able to directly work with the customer under our fab here, so we can bridge the product design and the manufacturing together. Lots of time we use the term DTCO — design technology co-optimization — [so that is what we are going to do in Munich].

The development center in Munich will be the company's 10th facility of this kind, but the first one in Europe, which highlights the revival of European chip development in particular and the semiconductor industry in general. TSMC already has nine chip design centers across the world that are located in Canada, China, Japan, Taiwan, and the U.S.

In addition, the world's largest contract maker of chips has Design Center Alliance (DCA) — a global network of companies — that provide chip implementation services as well as system-level design solutions. Ultimately, these companies can even design chips to order, something that TSMC's own design centers are not meant to do.

TSMC — along with its partners Bosch, Infineon, and NXP — is currently building its first fab in Europe. The fab, which will be capable of building chips on TSMC's N12 and N16 (12nm and 16nm-class), is mainly aimed at MCUs, but will certainly make other types of chips. To perform and yield optimally, all chips nowadays require design optimizations that may go beyond what EDA software offers, which is why TSMC needs its design center in Europe.

"It is not like you bring the technology there and you can do manufacturing for the rest of your life," said Zhang. "That does not work that way. You need to work closely with your end customer to continue to make an improvement. So, by having a design team right here in the heart of the semiconductor land in Europe, we can bridge the customer and the technology manufacturing closer."

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