News AMD Expected to Become TSMC's Second Largest Customer

[Admin]

AMD may surpass Nvidia as one of TSMC's major customers.

AMD Expected to Become TSMC's Second Largest Customer : Read more

 

[jkflipflop98]

All the power is still in TSMC's favor. This won't give AMD any better pricing or terms. There's A LOT of demand and TSMC is holding all the supply. TSMC could tell AMD to go pound sand and they would have those wafer starts sold to another company by the end of the day.

 

[JayNor]

Intel announced a DARPA partnership today, which uses its eASIC chips. Up until now these have been built at TSM, with 16nm being the most recent node. The announcement says Intel will be building DARPA eASIC projects on Intel's 10nm. Perhaps this is a first glimpse of a "built in the USA" promotion.

 

[vern72]

I see GlobalFoundaries is still making poor decisions.

 

[VforV]

I see GlobalFoundaries is still making poor decisions.

What do you mean still? They made that decision in 2018... to not fight for the avant-garde tech crown and as far as the reports go, they are doing profit for the first time in years making tech on older nodes. You might need to inform yourself better...

We as custumers might want and like to have another cutting edge foundry, but as far as they care, they are making more $$$ now, than before when they were trying to compete.

 

[TCA_ChinChin]

I guess in an indirect way, US sanctions will actually improve supply for AMD products by limiting TSMC's previous Chinese customers and giving AMD for supply from TSMC.

 

[Co BIY]

if AMD becomes TSMC's second-largest customer, it will be far easier for the company to secure chip supply from the world's largest contract maker of semiconductors, which will force Nvidia to order chips at Samsung Foundry.

While the first is possibly true (Not entirely clear why this would be the case). I'm sure the second is not true. In fact the article gave some reasons that could drive Nvidia to source more production at TSMC rather than less.

Interesting that even intel is such a large and growing TSMC customer.

TSMC is doing amazingly well. The only threat to them is a large cyclical downturn which has been common in semiconductors. OTOH they are positioned to weather that with their large single-source fabless customers which gives them a demand stability similar to Samsung or intel.

 

[waltc3]

You never know what to believe on the Internet anymore--I read a couple of months ago that AMD had already displaced Apple as TSMC's largest customer through AMD's 2021 advance bookings...

 

[cryoburner]

You never know what to believe on the Internet anymore--I read a couple of months ago that AMD had already displaced Apple as TSMC's largest customer through AMD's 2021 advance bookings...

That may have been referring specifically to them being the largest customer on TSMC's 7nm node, since Apple has already started transitioning their products to 5nm.

 

[PiranhaTech]

It makes sense. AMD Ryzen 5000 series was hot and the performance was amazing. AMD GPUs are sold out. AMD is also in the PS4, PS5, and a whole bunch of Xboxes. With the Playstation and Xbox, it might not be AMD-specific chips but chips built upon an AMD license

 

[waltc3]

That may have been referring specifically to them being the largest customer on TSMC's 7nm node, since Apple has already started transitioning their products to 5nm.

Apple's 5nm production won't even be a patch on TSMC's total 7nm production--in fact, TSMC's 5nm production this year will be far lower than their 7nm production. But, the article I read stated that AMD had specifically knocked off Apple as TSMC's largest customer in 2021 through advance reserved capacity bookings for 2021 TSMC production. So, who knows....? I don't really care, but considering how large the demand is for AMD products it wouldn't surprise me at all.

 

[spongiemaster]

You never know what to believe on the Internet anymore--I read a couple of months ago that AMD had already displaced Apple as TSMC's largest customer through AMD's 2021 advance bookings...

It was only for the 7nm node, and that's because Apple moved on to 5nm.

AMD to usurp Apple as TSMC's largest 7nm customer

Meanwhile, Apple A14 SoCs will start rolling off TSMC's 5nm lines from Q2 this year.

hexus.net

 

[cryoburner]

Apple's 5nm production won't even be a patch on TSMC's total 7nm production--in fact, TSMC's 5nm production this year will be far lower than their 7nm production.

Apple's latest smartphones and M1-based laptops have already been using processors built on the 5nm node since their release last fall. Most of their processor production has likely shifted to 5nm already.

And according to this analytics firm's report, they are expecting 5nm to account for 5% of global 12" wafer production this year, while 7nm will account for 11%...

Foundry Industry’s Robust Revenue Growth to Continue in 2021 - Counterpoint

- Foundry Industry’s Robust Revenue Growth to Continue in 2021 - Counterpoint

www.counterpointresearch.com

Over half of that 5nm production is expected to go to Apple, whereas over a quarter of 7nm production is expected to go to AMD. That estimate would place total 5/7nm wafer production roughly similar between the two companies, with Apple being a little ahead when their remaining 7nm production is taken into account, but with the bulk of their production being on 5nm, they will undoubtedly be paying significantly more per wafer.