An Introduction to TSMC

TSMC is the world’s largest pure-play semiconductor foundry. Founded on February 21, 1987 and headquartered in Hsinchu, Taiwan, TSMC pioneered the business model of focusing solely on manufacturing customers’ semiconductor designs. As a pure-play semiconductor foundry, the Company does not design, manufacture, or market semiconductor products under its own brand name, ensuring that TSMC does not compete directly with its customers.

With a diverse global customer base, TSMC-manufactured microchips are used in a broad variety of applications that cover various segments of the computer, communications, consumer, industrial and other electronics markets.

Annual capacity of the manufacturing facilities managed by TSMC, including subsidiaries and joint ventures, totaled 15.09 million 8-inch equivalent wafers in 2012. In Taiwan, TSMC operates three advanced 12-inch wafer fabs, four 8-inch wafer fabs, and one 6-inch wafer fab. TSMC also manages two 8-inch fabs at wholly owned subsidiaries: WaferTech in the United States and TSMC China Company Limited. In addition, TSMC obtains 8-inch wafer capacity from other companies in which the Company has an equity interest.

TSMC provides customer service through its account management and engineering services offices in North America, Europe, Japan, China, South Korea, and India. The Company employed more than 37,000 people worldwide as of the end of 2012.

TSMC continued to lead the foundry segment of the semiconductor industry in both advanced and “More-than-Moore” process technologies. Already the first foundry to provide 65nm and 40nm production capacity, TSMC in 2012 also reached full volume production of 28nm featuring 28HP & 28HPM for high performance and 28LP & 28HPL for low power, and began the initial customer tape out of 20nm technology. In addition to general-purpose logic process technology, TSMC supports the wide-ranging needs of its customers with embedded non-volatile memory, embedded DRAM, Mixed Signal/RF, high voltage, CMOS image sensor, MEMS, silicon germanium technologies and automotive service packages.

TSMC’s subsidiaries “TSMC Solid State Lighting Ltd.” and “TSMC Solar Ltd.” also respectively engage in the researching, developing, designing, manufacturing and selling of solid state lighting devices as well as related products and systems, and solar-related technologies and products.

The Company is listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) under ticker number 2330, and its American Depositary Shares trade on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the symbol “TSM”.