Vanguard International Semiconductor Brand Guidelines: Hsinchu’s DRAM Maker Turned Foundry

A research project becomes a company.

Vanguard International Semiconductor, usually shortened to VIS and called 世界先進 in Chinese, grew out of a national effort to make memory chips in Taiwan. Chinese Wikipedia, citing histories published by the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), says Taiwan’s computer makers had been held back by memory supply, so ITRI ran a five-year submicron process programme to develop domestic DRAM technology; in 1993 its first 16-megabit DRAM on eight-inch wafers passed verification.

The company was spun out of that programme. It was founded in December 1994 in the Hsinchu Science Park — Chinese Wikipedia gives 5 December — with Morris Chang named as founder by English Wikipedia. Chinese Wikipedia says TSMC led a group of 13 companies that took up the transfer. English Wikipedia says VIS listed on Taiwan’s over-the-counter market in March 1998, with TSMC and the National Development Fund of the Executive Yuan among its main shareholders; in January 2019 Electronics Weekly described VIS as a company “in which TSMC has a major shareholding.”

Memory did not last. VIS made DRAM and other memory and also built logic and mixed-signal products for TSMC as a subcontractor, according to English Wikipedia. Chinese Wikipedia says DRAM prices fell sharply in the late 1990s and the company ran into heavy losses, and that in 2000 Morris Chang, then chairman, announced its exit from the DRAM business in favour of contract manufacturing. English Wikipedia says the change was complete by February 2004, when VIS stopped making DRAM and became a pure-play foundry.

A foundry built from bought fabs.

Much of VIS’s capacity came from other companies’ factories. Its first fab, in the Hsinchu Science Park, is also its headquarters. Its second, in the same park, was a Winbond Electronics line: Chinese Wikipedia dates the purchase to 2007, and English Wikipedia, citing EE Times Asia, says it was finalised in January 2008. A third fab, in Luzhu, Taoyuan, came from Nanya Technology in 2014, and a fifth, in Hsinchu, was bought in 2021 from AU Optronics, Chinese Wikipedia says.

The fourth was abroad. On 31 January 2019 Electronics Weekly reported that VIS would buy GlobalFoundries’ Fab 3E in Tampines, Singapore, including its buildings, equipment and the intellectual property of GlobalFoundries’ MEMS business, with GlobalFoundries running the plant through the end of 2019 and VIS offering jobs to all its staff. The paper put the fab’s capacity at about 35,000 eight-inch wafers a month and said VIS’s own capacity had been fully used since 2018. English Wikipedia says ownership passed on 31 December 2019 and that the fab makes MEMS and analog and mixed-signal chips; Chinese Wikipedia notes the site had belonged to Chartered Semiconductor before GlobalFoundries took over Chartered in 2009.

All five of these fabs work with eight-inch (200-millimetre) wafers, Chinese Wikipedia says, and in 2023, Chinese Wikipedia says, VIS still operated them across Taiwan and Singapore. Its newer business also sits in Singapore, in a joint venture built around a twelve-inch fab.

Design and documentation.

Contract chip makers sell a service rather than a product with their own name on it. The chips they make leave the plant under their customers’ names, so a foundry’s identity has to be built from the things it can show: the wafer, the cleanroom, the fab and the people who run it.

The wafer is the usual starting point. Foundry photographs often show a finished wafer held up to the light, its grid of chips throwing back a rainbow sheen, or a stack of wafers in a carrier ready for the next step. Close-ups of patterned silicon give a company a recognisable image without revealing any customer’s design.

Inside the fab, the pictures follow a familiar pattern: engineers in full-body cleanroom suits, often called bunny suits, standing at tools under the yellow light used in lithography areas; long, bright corridors lined with equipment; and overhead transport systems carrying wafer pods along tracks in the ceiling. From outside, aerial shots of fab campuses, with their long, low buildings and utility plants, stand in for scale and capacity.

Foundries also present themselves at trade shows and conferences, such as the SEMICON exhibitions held in several regions, as well as through their own technology events for customers. Their names usually travel as abbreviations or short forms, and their written materials lean on process names, node figures and fab locations. This guide sets out what can be checked about each company — who founded it, who owns it, where it makes wafers — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

VSMC, a twelve-inch fab with NXP.

The joint venture is VisionPower Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, or VSMC. VIS and the chipmaker NXP Semiconductors made their plans public in the summer of 2024, Evertiq reported, and formed the joint venture in September 2024, according to their joint press release. VSMC broke ground on a 300-millimetre fab in Tampines on 4 December 2024; Evertiq reported the next day that initial production was slated for 2027 and that the plant would run a fully automated production model with an automated material handling system. Leuh Fang chairs both VSMC and VIS.

Building went on through 2025. VSMC says construction began in April 2025 and its first tool was moved in during October 2025. On 28 September 2026 it held a grand opening for what it calls its first 300-millimetre fab in Singapore, after processing its first sample lot. The company said in October 2026 that the fab supports process technologies from 130 to 40 nanometres — its website lists BCD power processes at 130 and 90 nanometres and 40-nanometre low-power and embedded-flash processes — and that it expects about 44,000 twelve-inch wafers a month at full capacity by 2029; the 2024 announcement had given 55,000.

Both partners framed the project in their own terms. At the groundbreaking, Leuh Fang said the fab would “provide specialty IC foundry services” and lay the foundation for VIS’s future development, while NXP’s then chief executive, Kurt Sievers, said it was “entirely aligned” with NXP’s hybrid manufacturing strategy and would give it supply control and geographic resilience. Singapore’s Economic Development Board said the project would create about 1,500 jobs. VIS itself remains headquartered in Hsinchu and is usually known by its three initials.

For a design guide, VIS shows how a company can keep its name through a complete change of business, from making memory to making other companies’ chips. Compare TSMC, which led its founding, and GlobalFoundries, which sold it the Singapore fab. For this guide we use green, grey and a brass accent with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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