As Intel delays Meteor Lake outsourcing orders, TSMC may slow down the 3nm process plan

It was reported a month ago that Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger may go to TSMC in August to meet with TSMC’s executives to revise the 3nm production plan. Next year, Intel will launch Meteor Lake with a modular design. In addition to using its own new Intel 4 process, it will also use GPU modules manufactured by TSMC’s N3 process.

According to the latest report from TrendForce, Intel is delaying the release of Meteor Lake until the end of 2023, and it is not clear why. With the change to the Meteor Lake schedule, Intel is rumored to have canceled most of its 3nm orders scheduled for 2023, keeping only a small number for engineering validation. This matter has a great impact on TSMC’s advanced process capacity expansion plan, resulting in the first batch of 3nm chip customers from the second half of 2022 to the first half of 2023, only Apple.

In view of Intel’s original huge order volume, and customers such as AMD, Qualcomm and MediaTek may not have 3nm orders until 2024, TSMC has also postponed its capacity expansion plan in 2023. It is expected that TSMC’s revenue in 2023 will continue to grow, but the growth rate will slow down, but it can relieve TSMC’s relatively large cost amortization pressure in the near future.

Recently, many Intel products have been delayed. In addition to the ARC graphics card, there is also the Sapphire Rapids for data centers, which was originally scheduled to be shipped at the end of last year, but is now delayed until the first quarter of next year, which is more than a year late. Many people speculate that Intel has problems in the manufacturing process, and the next-generation Intel 4 process may also be delayed.