Discussion Leading Edge Foundry Node advances (TSMC, Samsung Foundry, Intel) - [2020 - 2025]

[DisEnchantment]

TSMC's N7 EUV is now in its second year of production and N5 is contributing to revenue for TSMC this quarter. N3 is scheduled for 2022 and I believe they have a good chance to reach that target.


N7 performance is more or less understood.


This year and next year TSMC is mainly increasing capacity to meet demands.

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For Samsung the nodes are basically the same from 7LPP to 4 LPE, they just add incremental scaling boosters while the bulk of the tech is the same.

Samsung is already shipping 7LPP and will ship 6LPP in H2. Hopefully they fix any issues if at all.
They have two more intermediate nodes in between before going to 3GAE, most likely 5LPE will ship next year but for 4LPE it will probably be back to back with 3GAA since 3GAA is a parallel development with 7LPP enhancements.

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Samsung's 3GAA will go for HVM in 2022 most likely, similar timeframe to TSMC's N3.
There are major differences in how the transistor will be fabricated due to the GAA but density for sure Samsung will be behind N3.
But there might be advantages for Samsung with regards to power and performance, so it may be better suited for some applications.
But for now we don't know how much of this is true and we can only rely on the marketing material.

This year there should be a lot more available wafers due to lack of demand from Smartphone vendors and increased capacity from TSMC and Samsung.
Lots of SoCs which dont need to be top end will be fabbed with N7 or 7LPP/6LPP instead of N5, so there will be lots of wafers around.

Most of the current 7nm designs are far from the advertized density from TSMC and Samsung. There is still potential for density increase compared to currently shipping products.
N5 is going to be the leading foundry node for the next couple of years.

For a lot of fabless companies out there, the processes and capacity available are quite good.

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[oak8292]

wordcel soup, the reality is that wafer and ASP growth at TSM is driven by HPC.

Does Apple use HPC and is Apple included in that growth?

wordswords

You could work at Intel under Pat if you don’t understand economics. Intel has pushed out to eight year depreciation to make their economics look better. Intel fans are going to be upset if they don’t find trailing customers to pick up that trailing cost. Their margins are not comparable.

NV had problems with 40 and 20. 28 went fine for everyone.

“The revised revenue outlook for fiscal Q1 and the lack of a specific revenue target for fiscal 2013 is not going to make investors happy, and neither is the talk about the 28 nanometer ramp at TSMC, which will be affecting Nvidia's bottom line - since it pays TSMC based on the number of wafers it gets, not on the number of good chips it gets.

Huang calmly explained that TSCM is "doing fabulously" with the 28 nanometer ramp, particularly compared to the 40 nanometer processes that were used on its prior "Fermi" generation of GPUs. The yields on 28 nanometer wafers are actually higher at the same point in the cycle than they were at TSMC for the 40 nanometer node, which had its share of issues, but the yields for 28 nanometer are nonetheless not as good as the company was anticipating three months ago.”

Nvidia suffers as TSMC's 28nm ramp steeper than expected

Profits under pressure this year

www.theregister.com

“TSMC, known for manufacturing Nvidia, AMD and Qualcomm chips has run into apparently what we can describe as production problems that is causing massive shortages for the afore said companies.”

TSMC 28nm Capacity Issues Causing Nvidia Kepler GPU Launch Delays

TSMC, known for manufacturing Nvidia, AMD and Qualcomm chips has run into apparently what we can describe as production problems that is causing massive shortages for the afore said companies.

wccftech.com

Huawei was always there. In any case, Samsung did well when they had competitive nodes that yielded.

Qualcomm was also at TSMC and still the largest customer and the only customer over 10% of revenue. Part of that was modems for Apple.

 

[adroc_thurston]

Does Apple use HPC and is Apple included in that growth?

no.

You could work at Intel under Pat if you don’t understand economics. Intel has pushed out to eight year depreciation to make their economics look better. Intel fans are going to be upset if they don’t find trailing customers to pick up that trailing cost. Their margins are not comparable.

I'm not talking about Intel anywhere here.

 

[oak8292]

TSMC said that Apple was 22% of their revenue. That's only going to increase next year with Apple having TSMC fab their modem and wifi/BT chips they used to order from others. TSMC has been reporting YoY revenue growth of 30-40% this year, and even if Apple is responsible for 14% of that again it is probably safe to assume the rest is mostly "customer B".

So Nvidia is likely to overtake Apple as the biggest customer either this year or next, but even if they do they probably don't stay ahead because at some point the AI bubble will burst. Meanwhile Apple's smartphone and Mac market will remain pretty stable. They may not be growing the number of phones they sell each year, but it isn't shrinking either. At least not until something comes along that disrupts the smartphone market the way the smartphone disrupted other markets. I'm sure that will happen someday, but clearly not anytime soon.

Apple continues to move silicon to TSMC. Some of it indirectly with Qualcomm modems and some now with their own modems.

Nvidia has a lot of money and I have no doubt they are buying a lot of capacity. If there is an AI slowdown or ‘crash’ they may be ‘subsidizing’ some other TSMC customer or TSMC revenue may fall.

I have actually reduced my stock exposure to TSMC after strong gains over the last ten years. I think GAA will be a really good if it yields but don’t expect much out of hi NA EUV or CFET. Costs are increasing with decreasing benefits.

 

[oak8292]

no.

Where does TSMC put the M processors?

Smartphone is 27% of TSMC revenue in the last quarter.

If everything that Apple makes is smartphone and they are 22% of revenue that means Mediatek and Qualcomm combined are 5% of revenue.

Do you know TSMC’s classification of HPC? My guess is that M and even a lot of A processors on the 3NP process are in HPC. TSMC doesn’t care what the chip does, they only care what process it uses. If it uses HP process it is HPC.

If you built a server on N6e process it would show up as IOT. If you built a smartphone chip on N5A it would be automotive to TSMC. The process determines classification and not customer functionality.

 

[poke01]

I still didn't get my answer, what is AMDs volume over Apple at TSMC?

 

[poke01]

They're not even the first N2 customer anyhow.

Apple also wasn't the first N3E customer either, thats not the point. The point is they will ship more N2 volume than any other company.

Lol. No. People don't run splurging cash on something just a basic necessity. I'm still on my iPhone 13 mini. Treating it with care, and plan on using it until the hardware gives up. I don't even need new deluded iOS takes and 18.6.x it will be for a few more years.

Since my app store location is Germany, I get the benefit of AltStore too even if I live in Zurich and travel elsewhere. That negated the need for me to consider Pixel with GrapheneOS & microG.

So your okay with your phone not getting secruity updates by staying on 18.6.x? You know that on Apple devices full patches only occur on the latest OS versions.

 

[gdansk]

The point is they will ship more N2 volume than any other company.

No, the point is someone posted an "article" suggesting Apple is starving their competition of wafers.
Apple is not doing that...

 

[poke01]

No, the point is someone posted an "article" suggesting Apple is starving their competition of wafers.
Apple is not doing that...

We clarified that. The question now is why does Apple need that much volume for?

 

[511]

Nope, Skylake is not secure boot capable, therefore not Windows 11 compatible. Gotta go newer. That is IF you need Win11, which is required by a lot of corpo ITs now.

8250U is which is Skylake+

 

[511]

Apple also wasn't the first N3E customer either, thats not the point. The point is they will ship more N2 volume than any other company.

You sure M4 tab launched with N3E

 

[poke01]

You sure M4 tab launched with N3E

yeah I was wrong. Was AMD the first with N3P? they announced MI350 in June.

 

[511]

yeah I was wrong. Was AMD the first with N3P? they announced MI350 in June.

Publicly yes don't know who signed the contract first

 

[adroc_thurston]

Was AMD the first with N3P

yea.

 

[Keller_TT]

So your okay with your phone not getting secruity updates by staying on 18.6.x? You know that on Apple devices full patches only occur on the latest OS versions.

It'll be current enough for a while. Europe and UK have enforced mandatory security updates for every new OS version for at least 5 years. So iOS 18.x is good up to 2029.

Besides, phone is fully encrypted, I don't do silly stuff. I'm quite diligent with my privacy & permission settings to make sure only the bare minimum essential telemetry is enabled. No SM apps on phone and not even a profile on any of Meta's, inc WhatsApp. So, that's fine.

 

[511]

I run GrapheneOS tbh

 

[poke01]

Besides, phone is fully encrypted, I don't do silly stuff. I'm quite diligent with my privacy & permission settings to make sure only the bare minimum essential telemetry is enabled. No SM apps on phone and not even a profile on any of Meta's, inc WhatsApp. So, that's fine.

Fair, that’s very good.

 

[Josh128]

it's not windows 11 compatible because microsoft wants $$

Nothing else.

Sure, but no secure boot capability is the official reason.

 

[Doug S]

Does Apple use HPC and is Apple included in that growth?

Apple's servers they're building for internal use certainly count as HPC. How many wafers that represents is a huge unknown though, but given the timing of the first mass production output from N2 (which I'd guess is around late Q1/early Q2) being "too early" for Apple's consumer product needs, that's probably where Apple's first N2 wafers will go.

 

[marees]

Prices for TSMC’s latest manufacturing process, N3P of the 3nm family, are about 20% higher than the prior generation, and 2nm will be over-50% higher than N3P as price inflation continues to hit semiconductors, media report, citing unnamed supply chain sources.

TSMC is not allowing any 2nm (N2) discounts due to its huge production line equipment spend.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1969964842980458863

 

[adroc_thurston]

Prices for TSMC’s latest manufacturing process, N3P of the 3nm family, are about 20% higher than the prior generation, and 2nm will be over-50% higher than N3P as price inflation continues to hit semiconductors, media report, citing unnamed supply chain sources.

this is more FUD.
But yes TSMC is hiking wafer prices incrementally this, the next, and the next-next years.

 

[511]

The price hike is real the % depends upon the client Apple gets the best pricing though.

 

[Josh128]

The price hike is real the % depends upon the client Apple gets the best pricing though.

And has some of the smaller chips for the best yield. Imagine a 700mm2 GPU on N2X.

 

[adroc_thurston]

And has some of the smaller chips for the best yield. Imagine a 700mm2 GPU on N2X.

Doesn't matter, TSMC is good at yielding all kinds of die.

 

[511]

Doesn't matter, TSMC is good at yielding all kinds of die.

Not so soon like right out of the gate.

 

[adroc_thurston]

Not so soon like right out of the gate.

Their d0 drops like a rock by the time they hit HVM so that's very much on the cards