According to DIGITIMES, TSMC’s 7-nanometer family capacity utilization rate has fallen below 50%, and the decline will intensify in the first quarter of 2023, and Kaohsiung’s 7-nanometer capacity expansion has also been suspended. TSMC said it would not comment.
According to industry insiders, the 7nm capacity utilization rate of Taichung Fab 15B factory is lower than expected, and it has dropped to below 50%. It is expected that the decline will be further intensified in 2023Q1. The 7nm plan of the Fab 22 plant will be shelved indefinitely. In the future, it will be re-planned depending on the capacity needs of each process and the construction of new plants.
It is said that a series of adjustments such as vigorously cutting orders and delaying shipments have a greater impact. Although TSMC has many 7nm customers, the most influential ones are MediaTek, AMD, Qualcomm, as well as Apple, New Zealand, which have orders transferred to 5/4nm. The single is far inferior to the expected Intel, as well as the restricted Ziguang Zhanrui, Bitmain and Alibaba Pingtou.
Although it was full of confidence at last month’s legal meeting, TSMC also expected for the first time that the production capacity utilization rate of the 7/6nm process family will decline, and will return to the previous level in the first half of 2023. At the same time, TSMC will also adjust the Kaohsiung Fab 22. Factory 7nm plant construction plan.
Qualcomm and MediaTek have previously warned that the inventory of smartphones is serious. According to foundries, MediaTek is also one of the largest companies in this wave of slashing orders.
Due to weak market conditions, Intel’s PC, server and other product shipments were not as expected, which also forced Intel to reduce TSMC’s orders, including 6nm orders for Intel Arc A-series GPUs, and 7nm orders for Xe-HPC architecture Ponte Vecchio.
In addition, the shipment of new products is also not as expected. Almost all the top ten customers have adjusted, including NVIDIA’s use of 7nm A100 chips and 4nm H100 chips, and the largest number of RTX 40 series orders have also been fully revised or delayed. , and Intel’s 4nm and the most important 3nm process orders have also undergone significant adjustments.
However, TSMC’s orders below 5nm are still quite hot. In addition to the new orders of 5nm AMD Zen 4 architecture Genoa and RDNA 3 architecture GPU, Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 will also use 4nm process.
It is worth mentioning that TSMC also has a large order for Apple’s new Mac series with an annual shipment of nearly 20 million units from 2023, plus Apple’s normal orders for iPhones and iPads. Semiconductor equipment manufacturers said that they will expand TSMC’s orders after the global IC design customers have completed destocking, including Broadcom, Marvell, MediaTek and other major manufacturers.
