Yesterday, TSMC held a press conference in Japan hosted by Jack Sun, current VP of Research and Development in which the company’s new R&D policies for 2009 were announced to the industry at large.

As of now, the chipmaker primarily focuses itself in advanced CMOS technologies. It has announced that it will begin a shift to more specialized packing technologies in addition to CMOS such as analog, RF, power, image sensors and MEMS circuits.



The company has also signed an agreement with CEA-Leti, a French semiconductor research institute to join its industrial program called IMAGINE. From this, it will expand its interests in maskless lithography for IC manufacturing at the 22nm node and beyond. “By joining the IMAGINE program at CEA-Leti, we intend to federate the semiconductor industry around this technology and accelerate its development and introduction for IC manufacturing,” revealed Jack Sun.

On another note, the company expects to begin risk production of the 28nm full-node process in Q1 2010 with mass production in 2011, although this statement sounds a bit optimistic for our taste.

TSMC is also expected to increase its researching workforce number by thirty-percent from the current 1800 employees, while at the same time increasing its R&D budget by around twenty-percent.