On Tuesday we reported on TSMC would be breaking ground on their new 5nm fab this week and a new report today shows Chairman Morris Chang and his executive team breaking ground earlier today kicking off an advanced chip project worth a record $24 billion to assure future growth amid accelerating competition with its biggest rival, Samsung Electronics.

TSMC's spokeswoman Elizabeth Sun said that "Ground was broken for the company's 5-nanometer advanced chip facility in the southern Taiwanese city of Tainan on Friday. It will cost more than 500 billion New Taiwan dollars ($17.2 billion) alone. But if overall research and development spending is included, the project's cost will reach more than NT$700 billion ($24.1 billion).

The project would help create 4,000 jobs by 2020. TSMC currently boasts more than 46,000 employees, including up to 10,000 people in research and development engineering.

The investment boost is part of TSMC's effort to stay ahead in the costly race to enhance computing power for chips, and address growing demand for chips that can handle complex workloads in driverless cars and various artificial intelligence applications, reports the Nikkei Asian Review.

"The latest chip project is set to go into test pilot runs in 2019 and to churn out the world's most leading-edge 5-nanometer chips by 2020 ... We are also confident to roll out 3-nanometer chips some four years from now," said Morris Chang, founding chairman of TSMC. Only three companies worldwide could currently afford such heavy investment, he added, referring to TSMC, Intel of the U.S., and Samsung.

Apple iPhones running on 5nm will further support AR, AI, Deep Learning and Provide Power for Days. TSMC began talking about the development of 5nm processors back in February 2017.

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