TSMC

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Nvidia tops TSMC’s queue while AMD noses forward

By ckasprzak | TkOut | June 27, 2026 | AMD, Hardware, Manufacturing, Nvidia, TSMC
The Hot Take: We'll see how long before they go to Intel because TSMC is filled up in Arizona FABs.

Nvidia will stay TSMC’s biggest customer in 2027, but AMD’s EPYC Venice could pinch the CPU bragging rights. TSMC is seeing rising demand for 2.5D advanced packaging as CPUs become more important in the agentic AI bunfight. Apparently, GPUs alone are no longer enough to feed the machine. Morgan Stanley reckons Nvidia will remain TSMC’s largest CoWoS customer in 2027. TSMC is expected to reach wafer capacity of 200,000 wafers a month that year. Nvidia is using TSMC’s CoWoS packaging for two main product families. CoWoS-L is for AI GPUs such as Blackwell and Rubin, while CoWoS-R is for Vera CPUs. CoWoS-L capacity is expected to hit about 910,000 units, up 40 per cent year on year. Vera shipments are expected to double, which would help Nvidia lift data centre revenue by 52 per cent. Morgan Stanley said:“Nvidia uses TSMC’s CoWoS-L as the single source for all its AI GPU products (e.g. Blackwell and Rubin). Its 2027 CoWoS-L consumption could reach ~910k, up ~40 per cent year on year. Strong CoWoS-R bookings by Nvidia suggest room for AI GPM products (such as doubling). Taken together, we estimate Nvidia’s 2027 forecast for Nvidia’s data centre revenue to rise 52 per cent year on year.” Nvidia has been pivoting harder into CPUs to claw back China revenue after GPU restrictions. Several customers have shown interest in Vera CPUs. The company has hand-delivered the first Vera CPUs to Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceX and Oracle. Nothing says “agentic AI era” like an expensive chip being passed around the usual suspects. The problem for Nvidia is that AMD is not politely standing at the back. Its next-generation EPYC Venice platform is already in volume production at TSMC. Venice is based on AMD’s upcoming Zen 6 architecture and is expected to deliver better performance and efficiency. It targets both AI and HPC, while Vera is being pitched squarely at agentic AI. Morgan Stanley projects Nvidia’s Vera CPUs could reach 5.75 million units by 2027. AMD’s EPYC Venice, though, could reach 6.75 million units in 2027. That is 17 per cent more than Vera and 5.4 times its expected 2026 volume. “Based on our CoWoS consumption forecasts, Nvidia’s 5nm Vera CPU could grow to 5.75mn units in 2027, while AMD’s 2nm Venice CPU may reach 6.75mn units in 2027 vs. ~1.25mn in 2026,” the beancounters said. AMD has another advantage on paper, with Venice using TSMC’s advanced 2-nanometre process. Vera is based on a 3-nanometre process. The real headache for both companies may not be each other. It is custom silicon, where the cloud crowd is deciding that buying chips off the shelf is for the riffraff. OpenAI, Google, Amazon and others are either talking up custom chips or already building them. That turns the AI supply chain into a fight between outside suppliers and in-house silicon vanity projects.

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TSMC Employees Are Exploding With Rage Over Rumored Bonus Cuts Despite A 58% Profit Jump, And Are Coalescing Around Samsung-Style Strikes

By ckasprzak | TkOut | May 25, 2026 | Hardware, Manufacturing, TSMC
The Hot Take: Will only complicate shortages once this hits.

The seemingly never-ending bonus-related saga at Samsung is now spurring a chain reaction across Asia's industrial heartland, with some TSMC employees now actively advocating for the tactics employed by Samsung's unions in recent days to counter the management's penny-pinching ways. TSMC Employees are increasingly coalescing around the idea of threatening Samsung-style strikes to defend their wage-related perks A lot of TSMC employees appear to be venting their rage in recent days on select Facebook pages, honing in on persistent rumors that TSMC might cut employee bonuses. Of course, TSMC has a special place within Taiwan's discourse, with the company often […]Read full article at https://wccftech.com/tsmc-employees-are-exploding-with-rage-over-rumored-bonus-cuts-despite-a-58-profit-jump-and-are-coalescing-around-samsung-style-strikes/

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TSMC refuses ASML's expensive High-NA EUV equipment, explained

By ckasprzak | TkOut | April 29, 2026 | Hardware, Manufacturing, TSMC
The Hot Take: I'm wondering if they're holding out to see if China catches up to ASML's equipment as I know they are dumping boat loads of money to try and catch up to ASML's monopoly.

ASML has launched its 0.55 High Numerical Aperture Extreme Ultraviolet (High-NA EUV) in an effort to extend Moore's Law. The market had originally expected TSMC to adopt it first, but the company has held back. TSMC Senior Vice President of Global Business Kevin Zhang stated at the North America Technology Symposium that there are currently no plans to introduce High-NA EUV before 2029, mainly because "it's too expensive!" This decision also reflects how TSMC is shifting competition focus from equipment to process integration and cost efficiency.

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Apple Could Unveil Its Sub-1nm Chips In A Few Years, As TSMC Said To Fire Up Trial Production In 2029

By ckasprzak | TkOut | April 19, 2026 | Apple, Hardware, Manufacturing, TSMC
The Hot Take: Definitely looks like Apple is getting priority on the latest from TSMC.

The first wave of 2nm chipsets is scheduled to arrive later this year, with Apple introducing its A20 and A20 Pro range for its iPhone 18 family, but there’s little time for taking breaks, especially in the silicon industry, because the question is, what comes after this manufacturing process? According to the latest report, the trillion-dollar entity’s exclusive semiconductor partner, TSMC, is planning to achieve a new milestone by introducing its sub-1nm technology in a few years, with trial production expected in 2029. New lithography roadmap reveals that TSMC will initially set a target of 5,000 wafers for its sub-1nm process, taking […]Read full article at https://wccftech.com/first-apple-sub-1nm-chip-arriving-in-few-years-tsmc-2029-trial-production-target/

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Global AI chip suppliers compete as TSMC remains top foundry partner

By ckasprzak | TkOut | April 7, 2026 | Hardware, Manufacturing, TSMC
The Hot Take: Intel & Samsung need to catch up to bring prices down.

As the artificial intelligence (AI) era advances, approximately 133 companies are actively developing or selling AI chips, according to a SEMIEcosystem report citing Jon Peddie Research. Major suppliers include Nvidia, AMD, Broadcom, and Google, alongside numerous startups focusing on edge AI solutions.

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TSMC plots an Arizona gigafab land grab

By ckasprzak | TkOut | April 4, 2026 | Hardware, Manufacturing, TSMC
The Hot Take: The Fab competition is heating up states side from the look of it.

A new report claims TSMC wants an Arizona “GigaFab” cluster that can rival what it produces in Taiwan. DigiTimes says TSMC’s US plans have already “exceeded expectations” and the outfit is now eyeing a total of 12 fabs. The idea is to mirror the kind of fab network it runs in Hsinchu, Taiwan, only with more cactus and less typhoon risk. The report reckons TSMC’s and Taiwan’s combined US investment could hit half a trillion dollars, with the spending framed as groundwork for something bigger than a couple of token plants. That is a lot of concrete for a country that still argues about potholes. DigiTimes claims TSMC will add two more wafer fabs and two more advanced packaging fabs in Arizona, taking the state to 12 projects in total. The pitch is that this is not just TSMC shipping in kit and engineers, but a wider supply chain shift, so more production stays on US soil. Of course, building chips in the US is not cheap. The report flags higher costs for facilities, labour and depreciation per wafer, but says the early phases are ploughing on regardless. For some reason, the planners seem to be only interested in building data centres in the hottest places in the US, making issues like water and power really tricky. “Supply chain sources say that the plan for these 12 factories is TSMC’s largest overseas investment in history. It has transformed from an initial risk diversification base into an important extension base for advanced processes and packaging, becoming a key to the reconstruction of semiconductor manufacturing in the United States.” DigiTimes ties the fresh confidence to a recent US-Taiwan tariff agreement, with the US administration supposedly lining up incentives via economic and labour support. If that is the deal, Arizona is about to become an expensive negotiating chip. Experts quoted in the report argue the scale was inevitable because 70 per cent of TSMC’s customers are US fabless firms. They want supply security without the political choke points that come with keeping everything in Taiwan. That demand keeps dragging TSMC’s capex higher quarter after quarter, because it is stuck feeding both the front-end wafer crunch and the back-end packaging crunch. Every AI compute outfit wants a slot, and TSMC is the one holding the clipboard. Someone even floated that TSMC could surpass the Fruity Cargo Cult Apple in market value by 2030, which is the sort of prediction that always sounds clever until the next cycle bites.  

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