By hmimcu Although TSMC said that the global chip oversupply will not have much impact on it, it has used actions to prove the disadvantages brought to it by the chip downturn cycle, for which it is vigorously expanding its 28nm process capacity and competing with chip companies Chinese mainland mature processes.
First, TSMC has been affected by the decline of the chip industry
The second quarter results released by the early front desk TSMC show that the revenue has increased sharply by nearly 40% again, and from the performance point of view, it seems that it has not been affected by the decline in the chip industry, but if you look at the month alone, you will find problems, and the June revenue it announced in the same period shows that it has decreased by 5.3% compared with May, which is the monthly recession that has occurred in the past two years. hmi module screen
The reason for the decline in revenue is that since the beginning of this year, the global chip industry has gradually emerged from the oversupply of chips, and the US chips that contributed nearly 70% of TSMC’s revenue took the lead in cutting the news of the order, when the US RADIO frequency and analog chip companies said that the inventory level was too high, forced to reduce prices and sell, the highest drop reached 90%.
After the US chip, South Korea, European chip companies have also reported news of chip oversupply, and South Korea’s largest consumer electronics company Samsung has been rumored to have suspended the purchase of components from July, and is not expected to purchase new components until the end of August; European semiconductor company STMicroelectronics was recently reported by CCTV that the price of some chips fell by 90%, and there is now a significant inventory of chips that were once in short supply.
In the near future, the oversupply of chips has further spread, AMD, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, etc. have reported the news of cutting orders, originally planned to use TSMC 3nm process to produce GPU chips Intel The announcement of a one-year extension, which is TSMC’s customers, has further increased the impact on TSMC, and the month-on-month decline in revenue in May is a signal.
Second, the advantages of mature technology
When the chip enters the downward stage, chip companies and brand companies will give priority to cost, so that the cost of advanced technology is expensive to become its disadvantage, industry insiders pointed out that it is expected that by the second half of next year, TSMC’s 3nm process may only have one customer, which is because Apple is profitable and can afford expensive chip foundry costs, while other chip companies are not so confident.
In addition, TSMC, Intel and other cooperation to launch chiplet technology can improve the performance of mature processes, TSMC to its own research and development of 3D WOW for a British AI chip company to produce a chip, chip performance even more than 5nm, so will glow the youth of mature technology.
Low-cost mature processes can obtain performance close to advanced processes, which is undoubtedly very attractive to chip companies. In 2021, China’s three major chip foundries achieved the fastest revenue growth rate, which also highlighted the attractiveness of mature processes for chip design companies, and now that the cost control requirements are higher, the attractiveness of these mature processes will naturally rise further.
Third, TSMC turned back to develop a mature process
It is reported that TSMC has planned to invest $2.887 billion to expand the 28nm process capacity of the Nanjing plant, which is to attract chip companies Chinese mainland and seize orders from three chip foundries in Chinese mainland, and now Chinese mainland has become the world’s fastest growing chip market.
In addition to expanding the 28nm process capacity of the Nanjing plant, TSMC also plans to expand its 28nm process capacity in Taiwan, which is prepared for European and American chip companies. In order to attract European and American chip companies to switch to the 28nm process, TSMC executives shouted to the chip design companies, pointing out that the cost of the 28nm process is not much different from 40nm and 65nm, but it can bring stronger performance.
Mature processes are now mainly used in home appliances, automotive industries, these industries do not have high requirements for the performance of chips, more emphasis on durability, reliability, after all, the service life of such products is often up to 10 years, and mature processes have higher reliability and durability, which has become the reason for the further favor of mature processes.
TSMC expands mature process production capacity, the opponent of competition should be the chip manufacturing enterprises Chinese mainland, in 2021 Chinese mainland chip manufacturing capacity has reached 16%, ranking third in the world, TSMC turned to develop mature processes, which will have a certain impact on chip manufacturing companies in Chinese mainland, and this also reflects TSMC’s eagerness to seek new sources of income.