TSMC plays a crucial role in the semiconductor industry as the company is behind manufacturing the foundational silicon chip wafers needed for chip suppliers such as Qualcomm and MediaTek to build their smartphone chipsets.
As TSMC reveals its Q1 2022 quarterly earnings report this week, Neil Shah, the VP of Counterpoint Research also recently shared a report on the breakdown of the TSMC’s clients by platform.
Historically, TSMC’s highest revenue earner is the smartphone industry with tech giants like Apple, Qualcomm and MediaTek ordering their small yet high-density chip wafers for smartphone chipset production. However, in Q1 2022, in an unexpected upset, it seems that the HPC(high-performance computing) market has dethroned the smartphone market in being TSMC’s highest revenue earner among its clients base.
High-performance computing normally refers to the processors found on your desktop or laptop as these processors require higher clock speeds and in turn have higher power draws. Among TSMC’s HPC clients are Apple’s M1 Series of Apple Silicon SoCs for its Macbooks, AMD with their Ryzen desktop and laptop CPUs and their Radeon GPUs, and Nvidia with their MX and GTX lineup of budget to midrange dedicated graphic cards.
Looking back at the data, HPC which accounts for 41% of TSMC’s revenue has surpassed smartphones which only account for 40% of the company’s revenue. For revenue growth trends by platform, TSMC concluded that its HPC client revenue rose 26% quarter-on-quarter for Q1, making it one of the highest growing industry clients for the company. The other vital industry is the automotive industry which has also seen a growth of 26% quarter-on-quarter in the first quarter of 2022.
Another graph published by Counterpoint Research also points out that the newest 5nm and 7nm advanced nodes now account for 50% of TSMC’s revenue portfolio as of Q1 2022. This may be due to the fact that smartphones and HPC Clients such as Apple, AMD, MediaTek and Qualcomm have been placing orders with TSMC in regards to their latest high-density chip wafers for better performance in consumer smartphones and consumer laptops.
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(Source)
