TSMC Museum of Innovation — Attraction in Hsinchu

Interesting exhibits, well explained but we felt there was not enough time at the end of guided tour to review all exhibits. Some of it was due to the time it takes to complete "challenges" to get cool swag, which we really wanted as souvenirs. Had we known, we would have browsed first and completed challenges after the 80 minutes is up. It is at the exit and time there does not count. Some of the activities from the guided tour could have been left out, such as listening to the founder's wife in chinese while unable to read subtitles. Everybody just stood around staring into space. Given that the time there is limited, this was not useful. But overall, cool experience. We took the slow train to Hsinchu, bus 8605 from Hsinchu train station and walked about 30 minutes on way there. We took 2 long distance buses on way back. If you have time, it is a great way to see some of the landscape around Taipei and the Science Complex. It is very cheap for about 200 twd...

Everything the other negative reviews said applies. The museum is small and surface level for anyone who knows anything about TSMC, and can be finished in about 30 minutes. The tickets were unnecessarily hard to get, as they open only on the first of the month and were sold out within one or two minutes. Then when we got there, there were only about 20 people touring and the museum can definitely accommodate more. It took us an hour by express train from Taipei and then another 20 minutes by Uber to get there, as the public infrastructure in Hsinchu is not built up well. If they had given a tour of any manufacturing building or even office as a tour of Boeing or Microsoft does, it would've been worth it. But it's not worth it at all and the area is not really tourist friendly either. The museum does not do the company justice for how vital and impressive it...

I was pretty excited to visit TSMC since I am interested in IC design and fabrication. Although I know that TSMC is pretty closed due to fears of leaking IP I thought it would be cool to see more insights and images from their fab floors. (There's only a video wall showing prerecorded views from that) It is only possible to visit the museum with a tour (guide-guided or audio-guided) and at least it is free. In the end I was amazed how a museum about THE IC fab manages to show an exhibition not featuring a single wafer or silicium crystal or anything related to their work. The museum can be rather seen as a homage to the founder instead. I would really not recommend coming here (especially if you're not staying in Hsinchu). I agree with the other reviewers that most exhibits are gimmicky at best and can be summarised with "Oh look, computers and...