TSMC is currently the king of the global wafer foundry field, but its growth process has also been tortuous, including suppression of competitors and strict control of talents. For example, it has repeatedly sued Samsung , resulting in Liang Mengsong left.
also filed multiple lawsuits against SMIC , which caused Zhang Rujing to leave. Also, Jiang Shangyi left and was not allowed to compete with TSMC, so he joined SMIC and did not engage in technology research and development. Now, TSMC has made new moves.
TSMC has announced a new move
Zhang Zhongmou founded TSMC in 1987. At that time, the semiconductor industry had an IDM model, that is, the three processes of chip design, manufacturing and packaging and testing were completed within the company. Intel, Samsung and other giants Just use this model.
However, the wafer fab is an heavy asset project, and the investment is very large. This threshold has blocked many new chip entrants.
At this time, Zhang Zhongmou was keenly aware of the huge business opportunities, so he created a new model, namely the pure wafer foundry enterprise . This opened up a new world for TSMC's development. It was not recognized at first, but later it was proved that Zhang Zhongmou did it. correct.
Apple later left Samsung and chose TSMC. This model is also one of the important reasons, because Samsung itself also has a mobile phone business, so of course it has reservations about OEMing chips for Apple, and it also involves the confidentiality of chip design. After
stole Apple from Samsung, TSMC has been moving forward and now ranks first in the global wafer foundry industry. Its market share has always occupied more than half of the world, especially in high-end processes. 64% of the world's EUV wafers are produced by TSMC.
TSMC’s revenue is mainly based on high-end processes. In the first quarter of this year, 7nm and below process revenue accounted for 50%.
In addition to 7nm and below processes, TSMC’s 16nm accounts for 14% and 28nm accounts for 11%. In other words, TSMC’s 28nm and below processes account for 75%. 28nm is the dividing point between mature processes and advanced processes.
has reached such a high level, TSMC is still not satisfied. Recently, new operations have been reported, indicating that it will no longer expand the production capacity of 40nm and more mature processes, and calls on customers using 40nm and 65nm processes to switch to 28nm.
It is understood that TSMC will increase its current 28nm production capacity by 50%, which seems to be seizing mature process customers.
SMIC is very confident
Judging from previous relevant data, TSMC’s mature processes of 40nm and above account for 25%. For TSMC, the proportion does not seem to be large. However, SMIC’s mature processes of 40nm and above account for 81.4%.
In the fourth quarter of 2021, SMIC’s 28nm and below processes accounted for 18.6%, while the others were 40nm and above.
It can be seen that SMIC’s revenue mainly comes from mature processes of 40nm and above. However, 28nm has gradually become the current mainstream. For this reason, SMIC has made three consecutive moves, investing 100 billion yuan to build factories and expand production in Beijing, Shenzhen and Shanghai.
Recent news shows that TSMC’s high-end manufacturing processes have suffered order cuts from Apple, AMD, and Nvidia. The reasons are due to the overall decline in the mobile phone market and the sharp drop in demand in the PC market. This will more or less affect TSMC’s revenue.
In addition, judging from TSMC's first quarter financial report this year, the mobile phone segment has declined to become the second source of revenue, and the HPC high-performance computing segment has replaced it as the first. Perhaps based on these two situations, TSMC pays more attention to mature processes.
For TSMC, 28nm is a familiar road. Compared with SMIC, it has great production capacity and cost advantages.
TSMC is now increasing its investment in 28nm, and also calls on customers of 40nm and above to switch to 28nm. This directly points to SMIC's most important source of income, especially since SMIC is vigorously expanding its production of 28nm, which is almost equivalent to "drawing salary from the bottom of the cauldron"!
However, TSMC’s mature production capacity is limited after all, and its main focus is still on advanced processes. And SMIC has a very thorough understanding of the current situation. A few days ago, Zhao Haijun analyzed the situation and corresponding countermeasures.
Zhao Haijun said that in the face of structural shortages, SMIC took action early and responded by binding customers and signing long-term contracts.
The key point is that SMIC continues to invest in research and development, strives to smoothly switch between different process platforms, insists on making products the best, promotes multiple characteristic process platforms, actively communicates with customers, and conducts flexible deployment.
It can be seen that SMIC is still confident in the face of competition and is confident that it will continue to maintain rapid growth this year and in the future!
