TSMC Fab, Hsinchu Science Park

Hsinchu Science Park is a high-tech industrial area in northern Taiwan, set up by the government on 15 December 1980. It is the home of TSMC, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, which builds computer chips in huge factories called fabs. A fab is a very clean factory where chips are made on thin discs of silicon.

TSMC was founded in 1987 and was the world's first company that only makes chips for other firms. It now holds roughly 70 percent of the world market for this kind of chip-making. Chips made in factories like these power phones, cars, game consoles and many other things we use every day. The park now covers six campuses, with a total development area of 1,471 hectares, and the globe marks one of its fabs.

Why was the science park built here?

Taiwan's science minister, Shu Shien-Siu, wanted a place like Silicon Valley in California. He chose Hsinchu because two universities, National Tsing Hua University and National Chiao Tung University, were next door, just as Stanford and Berkeley sit near Silicon Valley.

The park opened in 1980 and has since grown from one campus into six across northern Taiwan. It holds more than 500 high-tech companies, among them the world's top two chip foundries, TSMC and UMC.

What does TSMC do?

TSMC was started in 1987 by Morris Chang to turn research from a Taiwanese institute, ITRI, into a business. Instead of selling its own products, it makes chips that other companies design, such as Apple, Nvidia and Qualcomm. The Dutch company Philips was the only firm willing to join the Taiwanese government in the first deal, putting in 58 million US dollars and sharing its technology.

It became the first Taiwanese company listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1997. Its chips end up in phones, computers and many other machines.

Making smaller and smaller chips

By 2020, TSMC could make about thirteen million 300-millimetre wafers a year, the silicon discs that chips are cut from. Its chips are measured in nanometres, millionths of a millimetre, and it made chips from 2 microns down to 3 nanometres.

It was the first foundry to offer 7-nanometre and 5-nanometre production, and the first to use ASML's extreme ultraviolet light machines in large numbers. The park also built a wastewater treatment plant in 1986 after residents protested about water and air pollution.

On the globe

The model shows a large, nearly windowless chip factory with air-handling units, exhaust stacks and cooling towers on the roof, and white gas and chemical tanks beside it.