By searching her mailbox, Chloe Chen easily found several of these job offers. The 43-year-old Taiwanese receives them at least every three months. “Would you consider considering new opportunities? » ; “We are looking for someone with your experience”reads the engineer. The requests all come from recruitment agencies mandated by Huawei, the champion of Chinese telecoms. “I never answer”she said.
The work of this microchip packaging specialist has become strategic as semiconductors reach the realm of the infinitely small. This former member of the sector giant, TSMC – the most important company for Taiwan and one of the most crucial for the West – is currently employed by an American group producing on the island. Despite calls from the Chinese competitor, she finds it more attractive to work for the Taiwanese and American industries.
She would risk no longer being hired by these groups if she moved to the other side of the Taiwan Strait, or even worse. The investigation office of the Taiwanese justice system, responsible for national security issues, has increased its investigations in recent years: companies present themselves, for example, as data analysis firms, in order, in reality, to recruit Taiwanese talents. in microchips, with salaries sometimes three times higher than those practiced. The idea? Stealing trade secrets from previous employers, for the benefit of China.
Read the survey: Article reserved for our subscribers The history of the Taiwanese company TSMC is that of globalization… and its limits
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At the end of Chloe Chen's studies, in 2005, the transistors of the most efficient chips were engraved at 65 nanometers (nm). Today, with technological progress, trial production of the latest generation semiconductors, engraved at 2nm, has already started at the Hsinchu Industrial Park in northwest Taiwan. Their mass manufacturing is to be launched in 2025 on one of these ultra-sophisticated sites, called the “Fab 20”. They will equip future iPhone 17s, Nvidia's new artificial intelligence chips, and will probably also have military applications.
The design of the chips is developed in the United States, but production is subcontracted by TSMC, which works for more than 400 customers, which allows it to make the colossal investments necessary for each new generation of chips. The state-of-the-art machines that only the Dutch ASML is able to supply cost up to 350 million euros. In return, TSMC compartmentalizes projects to protect trade secrets and ensures that an individual employee does not have access to too much information.
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