UMC

Spun out of the state-run ITRI research institute in 1980, it was the first tenant of the Hsinchu Science Park — seven years ahead of TSMC. In 1995 UMC switched to pure-play foundry work, the same model as its neighbour, and in 1997 it spun off its multimedia unit, which became MediaTek.

In 2018 UMC announced it would stop chasing nodes below 12 nm, the same year GlobalFoundries walked away from 7 nm. It makes mature-node parts instead: display drivers, power chips, microcontrollers — boring silicon that is somehow always in short supply. That same year US prosecutors charged UMC with lifting DRAM secrets from Micron on behalf of a Chinese state-backed firm; it pleaded guilty in 2020.