Huawei HiSilicon has reduced its production of 5nm wafers to TSMC, and the relevant production capacity has been taken over by Apple, Taiwan's "Economic Daily News" reported today.
Apple also asked TSMC to add nearly 10,000 pieces of production capacity in the fourth quarter of this year, competing with AMD and others for the 5nm enhanced process, the report said.
It is worth noting that only TSMC and Samsung are currently mastering the 5nm process. According to the above report, TSMC's 5nm process has been mass-produced and shipped.
Samsung is expected to complete the construction of the 5nm production line around the end of June this year, and mass production will wait until the end of this year or early next year.
The report said that TSMC will hold a press conference on Thursday to explain the operation. Prior to this, it revealed that the 5nm process is ready for mass production, and it is expected to ramp up in the second quarter.
With the support of 5nm and 7nm processes, TSMC expects revenue growth to reach more than 17% this year.
However, although TSMC is expected to grow well, whether its operations are affected by the epidemic has also received industry attention.
The report pointed out that many foreign investors have successively lowered TSMC's revenue outlook for the second and third quarters. There are also views that Apple has delayed 5nm orders for one or two quarters. The market also generally believes that its 5nm orders will not be as expected, even with full capacity. The 7nm is also affected by the reduction of orders by major customers.
Although TSMC did not comment on the above news, the supply chain revealed that TSMC's 5nm process has indeed been adjusted due to the client's consideration of the development of the epidemic.
Among them, Huawei HiSilicon cuts orders for 5nm and 7nm by about 20%, mainly mobile phone chips, and 5G base station chips.
The report also said that the vacated production capacity was obtained by Apple, AMD, and NVIDIA. Due to the spread of the epidemic abroad, the demand for working from home, online shopping, and distance education have increased significantly. Apple 's iPad and other overseas sales have been higher, and 5G construction has accelerated, High-speed computing chips are in high demand.
In addition, TSMC has developed a 5nm enhanced version process for AMD, which has raised the demand for more than 20,000 12-inch wafers per month. And Apple also added about 10,000 pieces of capacity demand, will also use the aforementioned process.
According to TSMC's plan, this year's 5nm production capacity layout and 3nm R & D expenditure totaled about 15-16 billion US dollars. The supply chain revealed that the actual investment amount will be slightly reduced due to the delay of the 3nm trial production line. With full investment in 5nm, it is expected to still reach about 15 billion US dollars.
It is worth mentioning that Samsung has also mastered the 5nm process. According to a report on Samsung's technology website "SamMobile" on March 12, Samsung has officially started to build a 5nm EUV production line after developing a 5nm process technology for one year. It is expected to be completed by the end of June this year.
According to the above report, after the construction of a semiconductor chip production line, it usually takes several months for stabilization, including testing, evaluation and production increase.
Therefore, industry insiders expect that Samsung will mass produce 5nm chips at the end of this year or early next year.
On February 18, Reuters quoted two people familiar with the matter as saying that Samsung Electronics' semiconductor manufacturing department has received Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon X60 5G baseband foundry order and will be manufactured using the most advanced 5nm process.
The report pointed out that Samsung will at least OEM part of the X60 baseband, and TSMC will also share some orders, but the proportion of the two orders is unknown.
