TSMC’s new U.S. plant in Arizona has received orders for 4nm chips from Tesla and is expected to start mass production in 2024, according to industry sources cited by the Electronic Times. In addition, TSMC has also recently taken orders from Volkswagen, GM and Toyota.
Last month there was news that Tesla had placed a huge 4nm chip order with TSMC, which is planned to be used in the future for the autonomous driving system of Tesla’s cars.
TSMC’s Director of Automotive and Microcontroller Business Development Division, Chen-Ming Lin, said earlier that the automotive semiconductor market is expected to grow rapidly at a compound annual growth rate of 16% from 2021 to 2026, reaching $8.5 billion in 2026.
In addition, TSMC Chairman Huang Chongren also pointed out that in the past in the traditional car manufacturers, the cost of the chip required for a car is about 500 ~ 600 U.S. dollars, with the role of semiconductors in automotive electronics has changed significantly, the chip used in each car is expected to increase from the current 500 U.S. dollars to 2000 ~ 5000 U.S. dollars.
Semiconductor industry sources said, has been the automotive semiconductor market for Infineon (Infineon), NXP (NXP), Renesas (Renesas), DEI (TI) and STM (STM) of the world, taking into account the cost and capacity deployment, the proportion of outsourcing to the foundry about more than 20%.
With the chip drought to change the ecological model of the car chain, foundry customers from the field of automotive electronics, no longer just IDM factory, both IC design customers also increase the research and development of automotive chips, and design efforts, while the international car manufacturers have announced that they will invest in chip design, and find the foundry to cooperate.
Among them, a rough estimate of automotive chips about 8 Chengdu is the use of 28nm on the mature process, 2 percent (most of the ADAS-related) using 14nm below, and this part of only Samsung and TSMC will receive orders, and TSMC technology, yield rate to maintain the lead, therefore, the industry has been rumored that TSMC took a number of 7nm below automotive chip orders.
The semiconductor industry further pointed out that the current electric car battlefield to Tesla as the first, technology about 3 ~ 5 years ahead of competitors, previously cooperated with TSMC for many years, but in 2019 will be self-driving chip Hardware 3.0 to Samsung 14nm, 7nm foundry production.
However, as the AI computing power and security needs increase greatly, coupled with Samsung’s poor yield and performance, even if the foundry offer is cheaper, Tesla has to turn back to cooperate with TSMC, so the Hardware 4.0 to TSMC foundry, and will be in the new plant in the United States, using 4nm process.
In addition, TSMC also cooperated with VW and STMicroelectronics, and also obtained a long-term contract with General Motors for a wafer foundry.
