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The Asian semiconductor industry toward the year 2010 is growing rapidly. The major players are Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China, and Singapore. Among them, Taiwan is the fastest-growing country. Taiwan has a strong demand for ICs because of her No. 1 PC manufacturing capability. Japan is still the leader and the major technology driver. Korea will remain No.l in DRAM manufacturing. Taiwan is No.l in foundry service. The enterprise infrastructure is vertical disintegrated but corporative, which is dynamic, flexible and quick responsive. China comprises a huge market for ICs and is No.l in TV production. Singapore is an excellent bridge among Europe, the U.S. and Asia. Hong Kong has a promising future in software and EDA development business. The rest of Asia has a tremendous opportunity for software development and export processing.The industries of information, communications, consumer electronics, and ICs and their development are kept moving in Taiwan. For example, the information industry had product revenues of 19 billion US dollars in 1997, and the average growth rate per year was 11.1% with a worldwide market share of 7%. We predict that in 2002, the product revenue will be 32.2 billion US dollars. Taiwan was ranked third in the information industry worldwide. On the other hand, product revenues were 3.0 billion US dollars in the communications industry in 1997, which represented 3.2% of the market share and was ranked seventh. In addition, the growth rate was 22.6% per year. In 2002, the product revenues will be 8.3 billion US dollars. For the consumer electronics industry, the revenues were $1.2 billion in 1997 with 20.1% growth rate per year. The market share was 2.2% and was ranked 13th. Finally, for the IC industry, the statistical data was 4.09 billion US dollars for product revenues; 21.7% for average growth rate per year; and 4.1% for market share, which was ranked 4th. We estimate that in 2002, the product revenues will be 10.9 billion US dollars.The equipment market in the Taiwan semiconductor industry comprised 15% of the world total in 1998, but the amount of investment was reduced about 14.1%, as compared with the year 1997. Moreover, the total amount of the worldwide investment in semiconductor equipment decreased 20.9% at the same time. It is clear that the reduction of equipment spending in Taiwan from 1997 to 1998 was smaller than in other countries. Worldwide capital spending in the semiconductor industry from 1996 to 1999 is shown in Fig. 1. As compared with other advanced countries, the capital spending in 1999 tended to increase in the Taiwan semiconductor industry. This implies good development of the semiconductor industry in Taiwan.

While applying machine learning (ML) to semiconductor manufacturing is prevalent, an efficient way to sample the search space has not been explored much in key processes such as lithography, annealing, deposition, and etching. The aim is to use the fewest experimental trials to construct an accurate predictive model. Here, we proposed a technology computer added design (TCAD)-assisted meta-learned sampling approach. The meta-learner adjusts the way of sampling in terms of how to hybridize the TCAD with ML when selecting the next sampling point. While an advanced semiconductor process is expensive, efficient sampling is indispensable. Using laser annealing as an example, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm where the mean square error (MSE) at the first 100 sampling steps using TCAD-assisted meta-learned sampling is significantly lower than the pure ML approach. Besides, with reference to the pure TCAD approach, the TCAD-assisted sampling prevents the MSE degradation at 200−400 sampling steps. The proposed approach can be used in other manufacturing or even any applied machine intelligence fields.