Learn more about technology in "Circle Talk Technology".
Today to talk to you about: TSMC has a number of abnormal actions, perhaps in the "darkness of Chen Cang", and did not give up helping Huawei!
As the world's most advanced chip foundry, TSMC's position in the chip field is pivotal, is the object of cooperation of all countries, Samsung as the largest competitor, although in the process of advancing with the times, but due to the lack of basic links, resulting in the performance of related performance and yield rate, are not as good as TSMC, so Samsung has become a secondary choice for major chip manufacturers.
The U.S. chip industry has declined significantly in recent years, as the most advanced chip manufacturer, Intel has not been able to achieve the 7nm process to overcome, for the production and manufacture of cutting-edge chips is highly dependent on TSMC, and also formulated a long-term cooperation plan, there is a great intention to give up continued research and development, in order to reshape its own position in the chip field, the United States has tried a variety of ways, in order to invite TSMC to the United States to build a factory can be described as painstaking.
Targeted related restrictions, resulting in TSMC free shipments greatly affected, in various ways to interrupt the cooperation between TSMC and Huawei, Huawei as the second largest customer, the annual economic loss to TSMC reached 30 billion, but in order not to let TSMC have a gap, all the chip orders of U.S. companies are handed over to it for production, on the surface revenue continues to grow, but the crisis in the dark has been silently generated.
In the past period of time, many U.S. companies have resumed the license to ship, similar to Qualcomm, Intel, Microsoft, etc. A number of U.S. companies, have been allowed to continue to cooperate with Huawei, but only TSMC's applications have been rejected many times, and now TSMC's handling is also unusually low-key, in our view, it seems that it has given up the plan to cooperate with Huawei, but from a number of abnormal moves, it can be seen that perhaps TSMC is in the "dark Chen Warehouse" and has not given up cooperation with Huawei.
TSMC's unusual behavior
In the period when the relevant restrictions began, TSMC continued to fight for relevant licensing, and even took the construction of factories in the United States as a condition, but in the end there was still no possibility of resuming authorization, but TSMC did not give up the plan to build a factory in the United States, and during the period, it also made it clear that it would stand with important customers to help them solve the corresponding problems, and these words were obviously said to Huawei.
However, after entering 2022, TSMC is unusually low-key in this regard, and does not mention the resumption of supply authorization, and the advantage brought by this is that the attention of lao Mei to TSMC is constantly decreasing, which is conducive to the subsequent resumption of corresponding cooperation, obviously TSMC, which has core technology in hand, still has a certain confidence.
The second TSMC gradually reduced its dependence on U.S. technology, for now, TSMC's only highly dependent on U.S. technology, basically only ASML lithography machine is left, as the core equipment for the production and manufacture of chips, cutting-edge EUV lithography machine, directly related to the chip's production capacity and performance performance, at present, only ASML companies can produce in the world.
And TSMC EUV lithography machine ownership, accounting for at least half of asML production capacity, which is also the reason why TSMC can have such a position, after the birth of a new technology, ASML will also be given priority to TSMC to use, in the face of the severe test of the process process below 7nm, ASML had to upgrade the technology, but surprisingly for this upgraded version of the lithography machine, TSMC did not buy it.
According to the news released by ASML, the first latest upgraded EUV lithography machine has been delivered to Intel, and the subsequent orders are also from Intel, not the pursuit of the ultimate process of TSMC, from this point it can be seen that TSMC has been interested in reducing the dependence on the United States technology, previously announced in the 7nm below the process, including the United States technology accounted for only 5%, as long as the removal of this part of the technology, can achieve the chip completely free supply, which is a good news for Huawei.
TSMC has shifted its technical direction
In the past, TSMC used the advanced process of lithography machine to improve the accuracy of the process process, thereby effectively improving the relevant performance of the chip, but after the chip entered the 7nm era, TSMC found that the use of such an old method, even if it can improve the process process, the improvement in related performance is extremely limited, so TSMC has also changed the technical direction and launched a new 3D Wafer-on-Wafer technology.
In other words, it is to use advanced packaging technology to make up for the lack of chip manufacturing process, which is also the "small chip" we mentioned, once TSMC focuses on the research and development of this technology, the follow-up will be very directly into the "small chip" era, the current TSMC uses its self-developed advanced silicon wafer stacking technology, it can make the 7nm chip performance increase by more than 40%, and the power consumption is effectively reduced by 16%, which will not be worse than the 5nm process at this stage.
The purpose of TSMC to do this is to achieve full autonomy in technology, although the current TSMC revenue is growing year by year, but all customers are from the United States, after all, it is not a good thing, and Intel is also committed to the research and development of advanced process technology, once the corresponding technological breakthrough is achieved, TSMC will fall into a greater predicament.
And before TSMC announced to build a factory in Japan, and has been authorized to work on the global layout, it is likely to divert attention, the current TSMC has come up with 100 billion US dollars to expand production, these actions are likely to be TSMC's "dark ChenCang" way, so Huawei may not have been abandoned, what do you think about it?