As TSMC continues to increase its production capacity and its yield gradually improves, TSMC's first 7+ nanometer process using EUV technology has been developed and entered trial production. It will successfully enter mass production after the second quarter of next year. At that time, TSMC will become the world's first wafer foundry to mass produce using EUV technology. TSMC's 5-nanometer R&D progress is slightly ahead, and there is no big problem entering the mass production stage in the first half of 2020.
Figure1
Industry pointed out that TSMC Longtan Advanced Packaging Factory is the base camp of InFO, and its main customer is Apple. Its monthly production capacity is nearly 100,000 pieces. As the process shrinks, TSMC has developed its own packaging technology, which has greatly reduced the packaging thickness of mobile phone processor by more than 30%, and has also won three generations of Apple orders in succession. The high-end wafer foundry process combined with advanced packaging will be TSMC's strengths to serve customers, and South Korea's biggest competitor, Samsung, may find it difficult to compete with it in the short term. From this point of view, the 7+nanometer A13 and 5nm A14 application processors that Apple will launch next and next two years are expected to continue to win exclusive OEM orders.
Just after Apple released three new iPhones in September, consumers focused on the performance of the new generation of Apple's A12 Bionic processor. According to the test results, this mobile processor, produced by TSMC's 7-nanometer process, is not only ahead of all mobile processors in the non-Apple camp, but is even no less than the PC processor of the desktop processor manufacturer Intel .
Intel was previously delayed due to the 10-nanometer process, and many market participants and analysts regarded it as a sign of the beginning of the recession. Although Intel's 10-nanometer process parameters are not inferior to TSMC's 7-nanometer process, the mass production progress is indeed lagging behind, including the launch of the low-power mobile version at the end of 2019, and other server and desktop versions will not be unveiled until after 2020, which also causes Intel to face strong pressure from its competitor AMD 7-nanometer products.
Figure 2
File from Taiwan's industrial chain, TSMC's 7nm FinFET process has won orders from many Chinese AI chip companies, such as Huawei HiSilicon, Cambrian Technology. Kirin 980 will be upgraded to the latest 7nm process and will still be handed over to TSMC for OEM. Although there was previously news that Samsung, GlobalFoundries and even Intel wanted to win orders for Kirin processors, it eventually ended up spending TSMC.
supply chain has also been reported that Huawei's IC designer HiSilicon will be the first to import WoW packaging and combine HBM's high-end chips. However, TSMC has not commented on market rumors, progress and specific products.
At present, TSMC has dominated the 7nm process node and has won large orders from many large customers. In addition to Apple and Huawei, TSMC will also produce new chips for more than ten customers including , Qualcomm, , AMD, NVIDIA, etc. in the second half of the year.
Figure 3
TSMC's second quarter financial report ended June 30, 2018 showed that TSMC's second quarter revenue was US$7.85 billion, and its net profit in the second quarter was NT$72.3 billion (about US$2.36 billion). It is obvious that TSMC has gained market leadership through high-end technology research and development and huge investments, and has also achieved good financial returns. In today's world, core technology research and development is becoming increasingly important in economic competition. Only by daring to develop and break through core technologies can we occupy a place in the global economic and technological competition, otherwise we will be left farther and farther away.
