AMD has become TSMC’s second largest customer

by ddos ·

With its strong performance at the 7nm process node, TSMC has won orders from many industry giants such as Apple and AMD, and even Intel plans to use TSMC’s advanced process to ease manufacturing pressure. Taking this opportunity, TSMC is also constantly expanding its territory and consolidating its existing advantages. Although the next-generation 3nm process has not yet been mass-produced, Apple and Intel have preempted the production capacity.
TSMC N4 process

According to DigiTimes, the current order intentions of TSMC’s top six customers not only fall on the 3nm process but have even advanced to the 2nm process. Among these customers, Apple, AMD, and MediaTek have increased their orders year by year, and their contribution to TSMC’s revenue ranks among the top three. TSMC currently has more than 500 customers worldwide, of which Apple occupies more than 20% of TSMC’s production capacity, and has been TSMC’s largest customer for many years. Even if TSMC continues to expand, Apple’s share has only increased. Qualcomm and Nvidia, which had large orders in the past, adopted a dual-supplier strategy for risk diversification, taking into account factors such as cost and capacity, and also placed orders with Samsung, thereby reducing their share of TSMC’s production capacity.

With the changes in the semiconductor industry situation in the past two years, AMD has become TSMC’s second-largest customer, under the strong performance of the Ryzen and EPYC series of processors, AMD and TSMC have gone hand in hand, and revenue has grown substantially. Embracing TSMC’s 7nm process node has become the key for AMD to completely reverse the CPU battle. MediaTek’s market share has increased significantly in the past year, and the increase in orders has made it the third-largest customer of TSMC. However, Qualcomm has recently adjusted its pace and re-invested its orders to TSMC. Not only does it have orders for 7nm and 6nm, but it will also expand to 5nm and 4nm production capacity from 2022.

In addition, Apple is developing chips such as AI and autonomous driving and has cooperated with TSMC to apply it to the rumored Apple Car. As Apple’s chip orders are both large in scale and quantity, TSMC has made preparations for future production in advance. It is said that this front-end Semiconductor Manufacturing Company’s expansion of the 28nm process production line in Nanjing is related to Apple’s automotive chips.

Tags: AMDTSMC