IT House reported on April 1 that semiconductor manufacturing company TSMC has increased shipments of its 5nm process technology series, according to wccftech. This is the most advanced technology in TSMC's portfolio, and the plant hopes to move towards a 3nm process later this year. DigiTimes claims the increase in production is to boost orders from several companies in the personal computing industry, especially after reports that South Korean chipmaker Samsung foundry is currently facing production issues.
Samsung and TSMC are the only two companies in the world to provide chip manufacturing services to third parties, and in this double-headed monopoly, TSMC has taken a strong lead due to its consistently reliable delivery and regular technology upgrades.
DigiTimes reports that TSMC has increased the production of its 5nm process from 120,000 pieces per month in the early days to 150,000 pieces per month, marking a 25 percent increase in production. The increase was due to orders from customers outside consumer electronics companies Apple and MediaTek.
TSMC's reported increase in production of 5nm products comes after rumors earlier this week that chip designer AMD's Zen 4 desktop CPU lineup will enter mass production as early as this month. The Zen 4 processor reportedly uses TSMC's 5nm manufacturing technology and is expected to enter the market within 4 to 5 months of production completion.
In addition to the 5nm production schedule, DigiTimes also reported that customers were interested in TSMC's 4nm process line. 4nm technology is a variant of the 5nm node, and they are part of TSMC's N5 lineup.
Among the companies that have shown interest in 4nm is an American semiconductor design firm, NVIDIA Corporation. Digitimes reports that NVIDIA has paid TSMC a huge sum of money to retain 4nm of capacity, much of which is expected to go to Apple, TSMC's most powerful customer.
In addition to Nvidia, Qualcomm has also developed a strong interest in 4nm technology. This stems from production issues at Samsung's foundry, which is said to be looking for alternatives because Samsung's chip-making technology can't provide enough revenue. In the semiconductor industry, yield refers to the number of chips in silicon wafers that can pass quality control tests. The higher the yield, the less the company needs to pay for semiconductor procurement to factories like TSMC or Samsung.
The Digitmes report also believes that in addition to strong process yields, another reason for NVIDIA to make this change is the brand image of the Taiwan factory. Many observers generally agree that TSMC gave AMD more of a manufacturing advantage than its larger rival Intel, and Nvidia is believed to be looking for goodwill to cash in. In contrast to AMD having to rely on companies like TSMC for its manufacturing needs, Intel uses its own facilities, and the company has recently struggled to make it run at scale.
Finally, TSMC's 3nm manufacturing process will still be in production later this year. The variant that goes into production is called "N3B," and Digitims expects initial production to be between 40,000 and 50,000 tablets per month. Soon after "N3B", there will be a premium variant called "N3E", which is expected to go into production in 2023.