Pingtouge, Alibaba's semiconductor subsidiary, is expected to be TSMC's main customer, Digitimes reported today citing industry sources.
Pingtouge, a wholly-owned semiconductor chip business unit of Alibaba, was founded in September 2018 to develop data centers and embedded IoT chip products for the next generation of cloud-based all-in-one chip novel architecture.
Pingtouge's deeply collaborative soft and hard technology innovation from both the cloud and the end, with the goal of making data and computing more affordable, continues to expand the boundaries of data technology.
Since its inception in 2018, Pingtouge Semiconductor has launched several products, including the AI chip Hanguang 800, the RISC-V processor Xuantie 910, and the one-stop chip design platform "Wujian", of which Hanguang 800 is Ali's first chip.
TSMC is currently the industry leader in the chip process, having taken the lead in mass production of 7nm process in the year Pingtouge was founded.
Its 5nm process has also been mass-produced this year, and the more advanced 3nm process is also progressing well and is expected to be mass-produced in 2022.
The advanced process and reliable yield have also brought TSMC a large number of foundry orders, and TSMC's current customers include Apple, Huawei, NVIDIA, and Qualcomm.
Apple is a major customer of its advanced chip process, starting with the A10 processor used in the 2016 iPhone 7 series, TSMC has exclusively remanufactured Apple's A-series processing for four consecutive years, and the A14 processor, which will be used in the iPhone 12 this fall, is also exclusively remanufactured by TSMC.
