According to recent reports, TSMC will give priority to the supply of automotive chips and Apple’s orders in the third quarter of 2021. However, the Taiwanese chipmaker will also deliver chips for PCs, servers, etc. Chip orders for network equipment, smartphones as well as consumer electronics products will come later. TSMC seeks to solve the chip shortage issues in the market. To this end, the company must choose orders based on profitability and other reasons.
There has been a massive ship shortage in the automotive industry which has caused the delay of at least 1 million smart cars. The global automotive industry sales in 2021 will be reduced by $60 billion. In addition, there are predictions that the global automotive chip shortage will continue for at least six months. In terms of chip shortages, some analysts believe that it will continue for the next three quarters.
TSMC has already started producing a new generation of Bionic A15 chips for Apple’s upcoming iPhone 13. In terms of scale, the demand for this chip is higher than last year’s Bionic A14. At the same time, due to the impact of the pandemic on the world’s manufacturing industry, Apple and TSMC also decided to cut the production plan of the iPhone 12 to give way to the new iPhone 13.
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TSMC plans to supply 3nm chips for Apple in the second half of 2022
According to the latest report from DigiTimes, TSMC is preparing to supply 3nm chips to Apple in the second half of 2022. However, in the next few months, TSMC plans to start producing 4nm chips first. In addition, DigiTimes also pointed out that TSMC’s new 3nm process chip will have a 15% performance improvement over the previous generation, while also increasing efficiency by 30%, and will enter mass production at the end of 2022.
Apple has previously booked the initial production capacity of TSMC’s 4nm chips for the M-series chips of its future Mac computers, and recently Apple has placed a large number of orders with TSMC to produce A15 chips for the upcoming iPhone 13. The chip is based on an enhanced 5nm process.
TSMC claims that its N3 technology will become the world’s most advanced chip technology that can be mass-produced in the second half of 2022. Relying on the mature FinFET transistor architecture, N3 will have a 15% speed increase compared to N5, its power consumption will also be reduced by 30%. TSMC and Apple have been in business for a while and this is not ending anytime soon.
