bonehead123I'm soooo surprised....

Said absolutely N*O*B*O*D*Y :roll:

Good yields, bad yields, no yields... it won't matta.... the minute the fruity boys get their grubby paws on these nex-gen chips, EVERYBODY else will be barking & howling so loudly at TSMC, that they will have to ramp up production way faster than they originally planned to, hopefully they will be prepared... :D

trsttteYes but let's see how things pan out with the upcoming almost certain global recession (europe at least is pretty much guaranteed). We're already seing slowdowns on some sectors. There's also the PRC headache and they might need a big distraction from their crumbling housing market and economy soon, a war usually does it.

CallandorWoTInflation isn't done yet. I know several people here in England on the brink of panic because of energy bill increases, and more increases coming. That means they won't be spending as much elsewhere, the story is the same story regardless of what country you are in.

I also think this will be the year people start to get sick of yearly upgrades on phones (not the majority of that crowd, but a bigger chunk than expected) which will lead to extra free time for the TSMC factories to allocate to another company and so on and so forth.

trsttteEurope (England included) is particularly screwed because of energy, otherwise I doubt we would feel as much economic pain (inflation not counting for energy is a lot more contained than say in the US). That won't change until the war in Ukraine ends and/or there are some changes in Russia.

But Apple at least seems confident, their sales prediction and production targets for the next iPhone didn't change, I really don't understand how they can sell so many of the same small incremental update year after year.

phanbueyEurope's/euros core problem regarding inflation is the economic policy that can control it doesn't work for the euro as a whole (i.e. what works for Germany, doesn't work for Spain/Greece etc.). Some countries need to hike rates and slow demand, and others would collapse if that happened. It's going to be interesting to see what the bank can actually do in that structure.

medi01So, TSMC is effectively a monopoly now, as far as cutting-edge fab process goes.

It sucks... :(


Central bank can control inflation caused by abundance of buying power.

This inflation (as in "things are getting more expensive"), however, is caused by spikes of energy sector. It is objectively more expensive to produce certain stuff.

UK inflation is at 10%. That is roughly entire Europe, give or take couple of %, is. Oh, and USA too.

Last time I've checked, neither US nor UK were in Euro (currency) zone.

dicobaltHow to make sure there's never enough capacity so prices never go down.

bugBecause traditionally, cutting edge technology is both affordable and ubiquitous, right?

dicobaltTraditionally a process becomes mature then goes to production as reasonably affordable. Right now everyone is rabbit humping the lowest node number they can get, and capacity can never be enough. It's not tick tock, it's tick tick tock. Securing that node is also a very expensive business that locks out competition. Then price anchoring happens as it is now. TSMC and all their large customers have every incentive to continue this.

dicobaltTraditionally a process becomes mature then goes to production as reasonably affordable. Right now everyone is rabbit humping the lowest node number they can get, and capacity can never be enough. It's not tick tock, it's tick tick tock. Securing that node is also a very expensive business that locks out competition. Then price anchoring happens as it is now. TSMC and all their large customers have every incentive to continue this.