According to a report by the EE Times, TSMC is struggling to meet the demand for 3nm chips from its largest customer, Apple. The tech giant has reportedly locked up all of TSMC’s 3nm production for this year, and plans to debut the 3nm A17 Bionic chipsets with the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Ultra. This means that other phone manufacturers may struggle to get their hands on the cutting-edge technology, as most don’t want to pay the $20,000 price tag for each silicon wafer used in 3nm chip production.
High Demand of Chips is attributed to Chipsets getting more powerful and efficient
But why is everyone clamoring for these chips? Well, the smaller the process node, the more transistors can fit inside a chip, making it more powerful and energy-efficient. The A17 Bionic could reportedly include more than 20 billion transistors, a significant leap from last year’s iPhone 14 Pro models, which were powered by the 4nm A16 Bionic SoC with a transistor count of 16 billion. The iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Ultra could be the only two phones from a major brand to use a 3nm chip under the hood this year.
The competition for chip supremacy is fierce, with TSMC and Samsung jockeying for 3nm leadership. Intel has also thrown its hat into the ring, promising to regain process node leadership in 2025. But TSMC remains the preferred foundry choice for leading-edge nodes, as Samsung Foundry has yet to demonstrate a stable leading-edge process technology, while IFS is years away from offering a competitive solution.
But even with Apple‘s 3nm business, 2023 is not shaping up as a good year for TSMC, and revenue might fall this year for the first time in a decade. Year-over-year sales could decline by a mid-single-digit percentage point. However, TSMC expects capital expenditures to remain in the range of $32 billion to $36 billion, showing the company’s continued investment in future technology.
In the end, it’s clear that the race for the most powerful and energy-efficient chips is on, and TSMC and Apple are leading the way. While others may struggle to keep up, the winners will reap the rewards of a market hungry for cutting-edge technology.
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(Via)
