Wednesday, November 23rd 2022
TSMC 3 nm Wafer Pricing to Reach $20,000; Next-Gen CPUs/GPUs to be More Expensive
Semiconductor manufacturing is a significant investment that requires long lead times and constant improvement. According to the latest DigiTimes report, the pricing of a 3 nm wafer is expected to reach $20,000, which is a 25% increase in price over a 5 nm wafer. For 7 nm, TSMC managed to produce it for "just" $10,000; for 5 nm, it costs the company to make it for the $16,000 mark. And finally, the latest and greatest technology will get an even higher price point at $20,000, a new record in wafer pricing. Since TSMC has a proven track record of delivering constant innovation, clients are expected to remain on the latest tech purchasing spree.
Companies like Apple, AMD, and NVIDIA are known for securing orders for the latest semiconductor manufacturing node capacities. With a 25% increase in wafer pricing, we can expect the next-generation hardware to be even more expensive. Chip manufacturing price is a significant price-determining factor for many products, so the 3 nm edition of CPUs, GPUs, etc., will get the highest difference.
Sources:
DigiTimes, via RetiredEngineer
Companies like Apple, AMD, and NVIDIA are known for securing orders for the latest semiconductor manufacturing node capacities. With a 25% increase in wafer pricing, we can expect the next-generation hardware to be even more expensive. Chip manufacturing price is a significant price-determining factor for many products, so the 3 nm edition of CPUs, GPUs, etc., will get the highest difference.
49 Comments on TSMC 3 nm Wafer Pricing to Reach $20,000; Next-Gen CPUs/GPUs to be More Expensive
Side note: I've said before that I thought chip makers were relying too much on advancements from the foundry rather than making their own advancements in architecture. Looks like now they're going to have to pay for that... and pass the cost along to us, the consumers, of course. It may be interesting to see what happens going forward.
The more smaller the node the more investment in R&D is required. And R&D is "expensive".
geee i wonder how much more I have to pay then while getting the same hardware but with another chip on my gpu.
development as well. ;)
Seems it might be a good idea to stick with my 3080 for two more years, I do not mind lowering details. I will still have to pay over $1000 for a 5080, but at least I will get double the performance (so 4090 level or more).
Silicon is at the end of the road for semiconductors, but unfortunately there isn't yet a compelling replacement for it, and until there is the cost of chips is going to keep increasing.
And N3E has theoretically 180 million/mm2 maximum transistor density which can shrinks RTX 4090 GPU to below 450 mm2. Lots of dies from a 300 mm wafer:
www.silicon-edge.co.uk/j/index.php/resources/die-per-wafer
It seems like new nodes are only relevant for increasing performance and efficiency, but not for reducing cost. But it makes lower-tier GPUs rather pointless from an upgrade path perspective.
The 4060 is supposed to have 3070 performance at $400. But the 3070 was only $500. 4060 will release almost three years after the 3070, so the performance per dollar increase will be terrible over such a long time period.
I feel like people will be upgrading GPUs far less often, because the performance gain will not be worth the cost.
They should focus on developing drastically different architectures and do what Maxwell did in 2014 on the same node as Kepler.
Are these inflation-adjusted prices or not? Cumulative inflation between October 2020 and October 2022 is %14 and if these numbers are not inflation-adjusted actual price increase is not 25 percent.
www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htmYes, Moore's Law is definitely dead but i am saying that wafer prices are not the biggest part of it. The real problem is about R&D of semiconductors:
I think consoles have a big advantage on there.
english.kyodonews.net/news/2022/11/148c2f25de20-breaking-news-japan-announces-strategy-for-domestic-production-of-advanced-chips.html
Also stop parroting this nonsense about greed. It's not greed:Every part of the semiconductor manufacturing process at the leading-edge nodes is pushing the bounds of what human technology is quite literally physically capable of. That's why it took ASML and its partners nearly two decades to rise to the position they're at now, and why doing so cost so very much, and why continual innovation there continues to cost so much. And that's ignoring the production costs.