TSMC Strategic Shift: Impending Price Hikes and Operational Challenges in 2024
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cucaulay malkin
Glad Intel and Samsung are going to be competitive cause tsmc is out of their mind.
vestibule
Nothing about China continually intimidating their country then. 😕
Raserian
Well you can't blame them, Nvidia, AMD, even Samsung has some chips made by them among countless others who need chips for non-PC uses. When demand for something exceeds supply by great margin, its price goes up. Nevertheless Intel is planning to make chips for third parties so it might offload a TSMC for a time being.
cucaulay malkin
Samsungs 3nm gaa is going to help too
https://www.eenewseurope.com/en/samsung-3nm-process-yield-is-perfect/
Kaarme
Since Nvidia came back to TSMC from Samsung, the time was perfect for TSMC to implement another price increase. A giant customer like Apple apparently never even thought about using anyone else, the same being the case for a number of mobile device manufacturers, probably, so TSMC is in a position to do whatever it wants. It wouldn't surprise me if the chemical companies selling material to TSMC smelled the opportunity in the air and did, in fact, increase their prices for real. It may not be just TSMC coming up with excuses for anyone gullible enough to trust a single word out of a corporation white collar's mouth.
alanm
"By 2024, TSMC plans to introduce a 3-6% price increase per wafer..."
Nvidia: "you see, our costs are going up... therefore our next GPUs will be 20-30% costlier".
H83
Basically this. TSMC has the best chip factory in the world, everyone knows it and everyone wants them so they can increase their prices.
I think cheaper stuff that doesn`t need the best nodes available has to move from TSMC to Intel and Samsung.
And let`s see if Intel can convince companies to use their fabs because plenty of people have already been burned by intel...
AMD: " If Nvidia is going to increase their GPU`s prices by 20/30%, then this means we can increase our prices by 10/15% and and still undercut them! Go Nvidia go!!!"
fantaskarsef
It reads like you two are actually getting sued because you're giving away company interna, I'd believe it 100% 😀
on topic: no news actually... things get more expensive, nothing out of the ordinary or unexpected (although one might argue 5% might be a bit more than hoped for); and operational challenges are what makes them the market leader, overcoming operational challenges.
tunejunky
this is a sea change in policy.
this really hurts AMD as "the company is discontinuing its past offers and discounts linked to prepayment, capacity reservation, and similar situations" - which was where AMD lived.
there are no friends or even loyalty in business - AMD & Apple made TSMC the pre-eminent fab by proving TSMC can do more than Android cpus.
fantaskarsef
Well you are right, this is actually the only news in town here: They will favor cash down payment over scheduled ahead filling of their production lines.
Which might not be apple's issue here (they can afford to try and outbid others, just like Nvidia), but AMD's.
That said, Samsung actively wants to compete with TSMC as it seems, and soon I believe GloFo and Intel could too step up, at least for last gen's nodes.
Just a noob's opinion here. 😀
H83
This was announced months ago. TSMC has so much demand that they can pretty much dictate their terms now, not the other way around, like it was in the past.
Of course there are some expectations, like Apple, their main customer. Intel and Nvidia may also be able to get better deals because of their deep pockets.
AMD`s pockets are much smaller, so no simpathy for them... 😳
Let`s see if this attitude is not going to bite them in the ass in the future...
Raserian
This is interesting, care to elaborate more?
If we count advanced nodes, only Intel, Samsung and TSMC can produce them. 20 years ago there were dozens of companies with cutting edge nodes. Not anymore. I am sure Intel will not be much cheaper than TSMC. They have a huge power right now, can ask basically any price they want.
H83
This is not the first time that Intel tries to setup a foundry business. A few years ago, they had a go on selling their foundry business for those who wanted, with their previous CEO.
A few companies were convinced and signed deals to use Intel`s fabs to make their products on future and better nodes.
Those nodes were terribly late and they weren`t that much better than Intel`s 10nm node...
This resulted in a lot of cancelled products and there`s even a story that on company closed doors because they went all in on Intel and had no backup plan in case they couldn`t deliver... Don`t know how much of this is true.
So Intel needs to convince people that this time things are going to be very different. And with TSMC booked for the next 2/3 years, they won`t a better chance than this, the same applies for Samsung.
schmidtbag
I wonder if there is some connection to the new factory being built in the US. Assuming stuff like tariffs are the problem, hopefully that factory will help work around that.
In the event a node shrink doesn't allow more dies to fit on the wafer, I don't think it's worth going smaller. I suppose for chiplet designs, every nanometer difference at this point will result in more usable dies per wafer. For the real big dies like Apple or Nvidia makes, I'm not sure dropping 1 or 2 nm is going to be enough to have additional usable dies.
Well considering both of them use TSMC to manufacture parts, they're really just adding fuel to the fire.
tunejunky
there's a huge connection.
every other fab TSMC has built has had massive subsidies from the gov't of Taiwan - far beyond what ANY major company in the developed world has ever received. this has been part of a national strategy (that worked) to supplant Intel and increase American dependancy with Taiwan.
in the meantime TSMC is "crying" that they cannot get a similar level of support from Washington - billions offered, billions more requested.
Intel after making a huge political push (CHIPs act) now has statutory requirements for development and production with the US gov't guaranteeing several different next gen production runs.
and you're spot on about monolithic node shrink - the performance doesn't always scale once you're at this level.
goat1
Word to the wise.. Buy a 4090 now, that way you don't have to buy another gpu for 5-6 yrs. Save up and buy a 7090 or 8090 later. I'm sure they will be about $3000 by then.
RavenMaster
TSMC sees wars going on, pandemic fallout... then decides to profiteer, adding to the mess. Golf clap
motoman26
Greed has no boundaries, I cannot wait to see the prices of the 5080, 5090
