Foundry giant TSMC has led advanced processes, but in recent years has faced many challenges, including material problems, high costs and the rise of rival Samsung. Recently, TSMC's embarrassing situation has become more and more obvious, and the investment in some advanced processes may no longer be cost-effective.
The rapid rise of the smartphone market has been driving the development of the wafer foundry industry, and the hegemon in this field is undoubtedly TSMC. TSMC has been standing tall with its market share of about 60% and leading process technology. However, recent developments have made people feel that TSMC's position is somewhat precarious.
However, despite the huge challenges, TSMC did not dare to slow down, because they knew that the only opponent who had the strength to compete with them was Samsung. Although Samsung's market share is only about one-third of TSMC's, they are close behind, not only catching up with TSMC in 7nm and 5nm processes, but even achieving the world's first mass production in the 3nm process half a year ahead of schedule. Despite Samsung's low product yield, TSMC has won more large customers in the 3nm field.
However, what is surprising is that although Apple's A17 chip uses TSMC's 3nm process, the performance improvement is not as expected. Compared to the previous generation A16, CPU performance has only increased by 10%, and GPU performance has only increased by 20%. This makes people think, is Apple's design not careful enough, or TSMC's 3nm process improvement effect is not obvious?
You know, the cost of Apple's use of the 3nm process is quite high, and TSMC has also invested huge research and development and construction costs. According to reports, only half of the 3nm chips produced by TSMC for Apple are available, while Apple pays for the entire wafer.
TSMC has had to re-examine its strategy. They have invested more than $30 billion in R&D and construction to achieve mass production of the 3nm process, and it is doubtful whether this high price is cost-effective. As Huawei's Kirin chip sales continue to increase, chip manufacturers such as Qualcomm and MediaTek have also been affected because they all rely on TSMC's process. Even ASML, the lithography machine manufacturing giant, has been affected by TSMC's EUV procurement delay.