Text/Ball Review/Zi Yang Correction/Zhi Qiu
Previously, TSMC, the world's strongest chip foundry giant, released the 2021 annual financial statements, once again showing the outside world TSMC's strong ability to absorb gold, with annual revenue reaching $56.82 billion in 2021, setting a new record for revenue.
The author believes that the reason why TSMC has such a strong ability to absorb gold, on the one hand, benefits from a huge customer base; on the other hand, TSMC masters many advanced process technologies, such as 7nm, 5nm and other advanced processes, all of which contribute huge revenue to TSMC.
New developments came from 3nm
In order to further enhance TSMC's revenue capabilities and competitiveness in the market, on January 15, TechWeb news, TSMC CEO Wei Zhejia officially announced the mass production progress of the new generation of 3nm process technology.
According to Wei Zhejia, TSMC's self-developed 3nm process development progress is in line with expectations, will achieve the first batch of mass production in the second half of the year, combined with the news revealed by TSMC throughout the year, the mass production time of the 3nm process process is about July in the second half of the year.
There is no doubt that TSMC announced 3nm mass production, will further enhance its influence in the chip foundry market, although there is news that Samsung's 3nm mass production time will also be set in the second half of the year, but Samsung officials did not give accurate news, if there is no accident, TSMC's research on advanced technology will continue to maintain industry leadership.
In addition, the mass production of TSMC 3nm will attract more customer orders, such as Intel, Apple, Qualcomm and MediaTek may seize the first batch of TSMC 3nm production capacity.
Intel became the biggest winner
According to the past practice, the first batch of production capacity of each generation of advanced technology of TSMC will be handed over to Apple, mainly because Apple is the largest customer of TSMC and will provide A LARGE amount of revenue for TSMC every year.
Therefore, the advanced technology launched by TSMC, the first consideration is to OEM for Apple.
Therefore, people in the industry generally believe that the first production capacity of TSMC's 3nm process will be provided to Apple, but the results are unexpected.
On January 13, CNMO news, a person familiar with the matter revealed that TSMC plans to distribute the new production base in Taiwan to Intel, mainly for its production of 3nm chip products.
This also means that TSMC will take the lead in manufacturing 3nm chip products for Intel, so Apple may get a very small 3nm production capacity, and even the first batch of production capacity.
Apple has always been a big customer of TSMC, why is the first batch of 3nm production capacity of the new generation, TSMC will be distributed to Intel?
In fact, the reason behind this, in the author's opinion, can have two aspects: on the one hand, TSMC is alleviating Apple's dependence.
In the eyes of many people, Apple has a very high dependence on TSMC, even to the extent that it cannot be separated, but the reverse is also the same, and TSMC's dependence on Apple is not weak.
According to the author's understanding, A quarter of TSMC's annual operating income comes from Apple's chip orders, combined with TSMC's annual revenue, Apple's contribution to TSMC's revenue is not insignificant.
Although TSMC's dependence on Apple has not appeared like OFILM's, the main reason is that TSMC's foundry technology strength and production capacity belong to the top in the world, and even in the world, there are few opponents.
But has TSMC been able to maintain such an advantage? Obviously, it is impossible, such as the threat of Samsung can not be ignored, therefore, TSMC took the lead in making an attitude, reducing dependence on Apple and mitigating the risk of cooperation.
On the other hand, the author believes that TSMC has its own careful thinking and wants to obtain higher revenue in the first batch of 3nm production capacity. In the past 2021, TSMC has made it clear that the price increase for the production of related process chips, because Apple is the largest customer, so TSMC has not increased its price much.
Therefore, TSMC wants to obtain greater profits in the first batch of 3nm production capacity, to take the lead in avoiding Apple, it needs to find a company with the confidence to increase prices, and Intel undoubtedly meets the requirements.
In this way, on the 3nm process foundry node, TSMC can obtain higher revenue from Intel.
Write to the end
With the gradual release of TSMC's 3nm process capacity, it will inevitably attract more customer orders, at which time, TSMC can also make a lot of money with only 3nm technology.