7nm Chips Will Decide TMSC’s Fate in 2019

    0
    791

    A while back, we had reported that semiconductor manufacturer, TMSC was having a hard time lately and had lost more than 10,000 wafers due to a manufacturing defect that cost the company around $550 million. It seems like that rough patch might just be over with industry insiders claiming that 7nm chip orders have increased exponentially, and this might lead to a better Q2 and eventually a better 2019 for TMSC.

    There are two key players in the industry that have made the move to the 7nm process, namely AMD with its Zen2 based Ryzen 3000 processors as well as local smartphone SoC manufacturer HiSilicon. Team red is expected to announce the next generation of CPUs and GPUs at Computex later this year, and both the families will leverage the 7nm node.

    TMSC

    As per sources, TSMC expects its 7nm manufacturing processes to run at full- capacity by the third quarter of this year. Furthermore, the company has also started fabrication of 7nm chips using the enhanced EUV tech just like Samsung, and by April, the production should reach full potential.

    Both the 7nm as well as 7nm EUV wafers will determine TMSC’s near future, most notably the second quarter of 2019. At the moment, it may just be HiSilicon and AMD, but very soon their competitors including NVIDIA, Qualcomm and MediaTek should also play catch up and migrate to the new node.

    Further reading:

    Leave a Reply