TSMC went to the United States to build a factory, which has always been controversial, especially Zhang Zhongmou, who has repeatedly clearly opposed building a factory in the United States, and even said that it is too naive for us to build a factory in the United States, and TS

TSMC went to the United States to build a factory, which has always been controversial, especially Zhang Zhongmou . He has repeatedly opposed building a factory in the United States, and even said that it is too naive for us to build a factory in the United States, and TSMC will definitely fail to build a factory in the United States.

But just recently, the wind direction suddenly changed. Zhang Zhongmou, who has always opposed building factories in the United States, made it clear that TSMC will go to the United States to build factories in a large scale. According to Zhang Zhongmou's statement, TSMC will expand its scale of building factories in the United States, and the monthly production capacity of 5nm chips will be increased from 20,000 to 22,000.

will also invest more than one billion US dollars next to the factory to build a high-precision wafer factory, and 50% of TSMC's chip production capacity will be transferred to the United States.

It can be said that after Zhang Zhongmou confirmed that TSMC will go to the United States to build a large number of factories, this means that the era of TSMC is over, mainly because of the following points.

First of all, TSMC orders decreased.

TSMC is the most advanced manufacturer of chip manufacturing technology, so Liu Deyin publicly stated that losing Huawei orders will not have an impact on TSMC, and the vacant production capacity will be filled by orders from other manufacturers.

Liu Deyin dared to make such a statement because TSMC has endless orders and a large number of orders are waiting in line. TSMC does not worry about using orders.

The situation has changed now. Due to the continuous expansion of production capacity and the decline in consumption, the production capacity of advanced process chips has been overcapacity, and the production capacity of TSMC's 7nm process has declined particularly sharply.

news said that TSMC's capacity utilization rate will drop to 80% next year, and the production capacity of 7nm, 5nm, 4nm and other processes will all decline.

orders decreased and capacity utilization rate decreased. TSMC began to worry about orders, so it not only needed to keep Meixin's orders, but also strive for more Meixin's orders.

Secondly, the technological leadership is narrowed.

In terms of chip manufacturing technology, TSMC was originally far ahead, especially in advanced chips such as 7nm and 5nm. Not only is the production capacity high, but the key is the yield rate also high. Manufacturers such as Qualcomm , Intel have transferred orders to TSMC.

But after entering the 3nm chip era, the situation changed.

Samsung has officially mass-produced 3nm chips, but there is still no accurate news about TSMC's mass production of 3nm chips.

In addition, Samsung has made it clear that it will mass-produce 3nm chips with GAA process in 2023, while TSMC is still mass-producing 3nm chips with traditional processes.

Although TSMC is also developing the GAA process, it will not be put into production and use until 2025.

You should know that Samsung's GAA process 3nm chip has more than 21% performance improvement and its power consumption is reduced by 45%, but the performance improvement of TSMC's 3nm chip is only 11%, and its power consumption is reduced by about 25%.

At the same time, Samsung has cooperated with US companies to increase the yield rate of 3nm chips.

In other words, TSMC does not have an advantage in terms of 3nm chips, which is also the reason why Liu Deyin has always emphasized that TSMC pursues technological leadership and pursues higher energy efficiency.

Finally, ASML no longer prioritizes supplying advanced lithography machine .

TSMC can become the number one chip manufacturing company in the world. In addition to its advanced technology, ASML has given priority supply of a large number of advanced lithography machines.

For example, ASML has given TSMC a priority to provide a large number of EUV lithography machines, accounting for half of all production capacity. Samsung and other manufacturers want more EUV lithography machines but are out of stock.

But now it has changed. Liu Deyin said that TSMC will obtain a new generation of High NA EUV lithography machine in 2024, and ASML said that the High NA EUV lithography machine will be delivered at some point in 2023.

In other words, ASML no longer gives priority to TSMC the most advanced lithography machine, which is not good news for TSMC.

After all, the new generation of High NA EUV lithography machine is mainly used to produce chips with processes of 2nm and below. The delivery time and quantity determine the progress and production capacity of 2nm chips.

It is precisely because of these changes that Zhang Zhongmou confirmed that he went to the United States to build factories, which means that the era of TSMC is over.