Taiwan broadens industrial strategy

Taiwan is widening its industrial push beyond chip fabrication, putting new money and institutions behind chip design, robotics and packaging. (digitimes.com) A decade-long Taiwan Chip-based Industrial Innovation Program sets aside NT$300 billion, or about US$9.3 billion to US$9.4 billion, for 2024 through 2033. The Executive Yuan approved the plan in 2023, and Digitimes reported this month that it is now funding more than 200 high-end devices for universities and research institutes to train integrated-circuit design talent. (english.ey.gov.tw / digitimes.com) That equipment matters because design engineers need access to the same expensive tools used to test and verify advanced chips before they go to production. Taiwan’s program office said last year the initiative was built to extend the island’s semiconductor edge into generative artificial intelligence and other new applications, not just keep adding factory capacity. (taipeitimes.com / digitimes.com) Taiwan is making a parallel bet on robotics. President William Lai on April 10 opened the National Center for Artificial Intelligence Robotics in Tainan, a new center under the National Institutes of Applied Research that the government says should connect research labs with commercial use. (focustaiwan.tw / taipeitimes.com) Lai said the center was part of a “Ten AI Initiatives Promotion Plan,” and local coverage said the government also outlined a NT$20 billion funding push for robotics startups from 2026 to 2029. Radio Taiwan International said Lai wants the center to act as a research engine, a cross-disciplinary talent hub and a bridge between academia and industry. (taipeitimes.com / rti.org.tw / roboticsandautomationnews.com) The third front is packaging, the step that connects finished chips to the outside world and increasingly determines speed, heat and power use. Touch-panel maker TPK said it is moving into through-glass via packaging, which drills tiny vertical connections through glass so chips can sit on flatter, more stable substrates. (cna.com.tw / digitimes.com) TPK said its Taiwan pilot line is scheduled to be completed in July 2026, and Digitimes reported TPK and Advanced Semiconductor Engineering plan a third-quarter 2026 pilot for the technology. The target is high-performance computing chips, where glass is being pitched as an alternative to organic substrates that can warp as packages get larger. (cna.com.tw / digitimes.com) TPK said glass substrates can improve thermal stability and signal performance, and it linked the effort to silicon photonics and co-packaged optics, two approaches used to move more data with less power inside artificial-intelligence systems. In its April 8 statement, the company said those architectures could cut transmission power by 70% and reduce signal loss by more than 80%. (cna.com.tw) Taken together, the moves show Taiwan trying to build more of the stack around chips: the engineers who design them, the robots that apply artificial intelligence in factories and services, and the packaging that lets advanced processors run at scale. The next test comes in 2026, as the robotics center starts operating and the glass-packaging pilot line moves from installation to samples and validation. (digitimes.com / focustaiwan.tw / cna.com.tw)