TSMC will be manufacturing next-generation 5 nm ASICs for Bitmain. The company designs purpose-built machines for mining crypto-currency, using ASICs. DigiTimes reports that the 5 nm volume production could kick off form Q3-2021. Bitmain's latest Antminer ASIC-based mining machines announced last month were purported to be up to 32 times faster than a GeForce RTX 3080 at mining Ethereum. Recent history has shown that whenever ASICs catch up or beat GPUs at mining, prices of GPUs tend to drop. With no 5 nm GPUs on the horizon for Q3-2021, one really can expect market pressure from crypto-miners to drop off when Antminers gain traction.

It's not only graphics cards and CPUs that are best kept on the edge of manufacturing processes; in truth, one could even say that consoles have more to gain from these transitions when it comes to their manufacturers' financial outlooks. This happens because usually, consoles are subsidized by manufacturers in that their actual retail price is lower than manufacturing costs; this works as a way for console players to increase their platforms' attractiveness and user base, so they can then sell them games and subscription services, where the big bucks are actually made. We knew this already, but Microsoft's head of Xbox business development, Lori Wright confirmed it yesterday at the Apple vs Epic Games hearing. Lori Wright is quoted as answering "We don't; we sell the consoles at a loss" when asked whether Microsoft does or does not turn a profit on Xbox Series S | X hardware sales.

Considering the similarities between the Xbox Series X and PS5's SoC, it's very likely that Sony doesn't make a profit on console hardware sales either - or if it actually does, it's nothing actually meaningful. This is part of the reason why consoles are usually actually in the forefront of manufacturing processes' advancements, as it's a way for console players to quickly reduce the BoM (Bill of Materials) for their consoles. Since the specifications don't change within a console generation (discounting Pro models, which both companies have taken to launching some years into their generations), they choose to take advantage of process advancements due to the transistor density increases that allow for both lower silicon area for the SoC, and lower power consumption - which sometimes enables them to develop slim versions of their gaming consoles.

The United States Department of Commerce is reportedly pressing TSMC to meet chip orders by automobile manufacturers. The ongoing chip shortage threatens to derail production of automobiles by leading car makers, and is a major source of worry for one of America's largest manufacturing industries. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said that the Department has asked TSMC to prioritize orders by U.S. automobile companies in the near-term.

Secretary Raimondo, speaking at the Council of the Americas event on Tuesday, said that critical supply chains of the semiconductor industry required "re-shoring" (return of manufacturing to the US soil). "We're working hard to see if we can get the Taiwanese and TSMC, which is a big company there, to, you know, prioritize the needs of our auto companies since there's so many American jobs on the line," she said, responding to a question by a General Motors executive. Later on Wednesday, TSMC responded, stating "TSMC has been working with all parties to alleviate the automotive chip supply shortage, we understand it is a shared concern of the worldwide automotive industry."

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the maker of various kinds of silicon products, is the manufacturer of AMD's EPYC processors. However, have you ever questioned what CPUs are actually behind TSMC? The answer to that question is quite simple. Today, we have come to know that TSMC is using AMD EPYC processors to power their manufacturing infrastructure and tape out thousands of wafers per month. AMD has published TSMC's case study, which pointed out that the total cost of ownership has been the main challenge of the Taiwanese company. By using AMD EPYC 7702P and 7F72 CPUs, TSMC addresses the need for both reliable and high-performing server infrastructure to power the manufacturing efforts. For research and development purposes, TSMC chose the 7F72 with 24 cores and a high clock speed of 3.2 GHz, which is ideal for the company needs and purposes.

For more details about TSMC's choices and solutions, read the case study here.

Apple's M1 processors are a big success. When Apple introduced the M1 processors in the MacBook lineup, everyone was impressed by the processor performance and the power efficiency it offered. Just a few days ago, Apple updated its Mac lineup to feature these M1 processors and made it obvious that custom silicon is the way to go in the future. Today, we have information coming from Nikkei Asia, that Apple's next-generation M2 chip has entered mass production and that it could be on the way for as early as July when Apple will reportedly refresh its products. The M2 chip is made inside TSMC's facilities on a 5 nm+ N5P node. While there is no more information coming from the report about the SoC, we can expect it to be a good generational improvement.

AMD launched the 7 nm Zen 3 microarchitecture which powers Ryzen 5000 processors in late 2020, we expect AMD to follow this up with a Zen 3+ on 6 nm later this year and a 5 nm Zen 4 in 2022. We are now beginning to receive the first rumors about the 3 nm Zen 5 architecture which is expected to launch in 2024 in Ryzen 8000 series products. The architecture is reportedly known as "Strix Point" and will be manufactured on TSMC's 3 nm node with a big.LITTLE core design similar to the upcoming Intel Alder Lake and the Apple M1. The Strix Point lineup will consist exclusively of APUs and could feature up to 8 high-performance and 4 low-performance cores which would be less than what Intel plans to offer with Alder Lake. AMD has allegedly already set graphics performance targets for the processors and that they will bring significant changes to the memory subsystem but with rumors for a product 3 years away from launch take them with a healthy dose of skepticism.

Cerebras has announced the successor to their record-breaking Wafer Scale Engine. The newly re-engineered Wafer Scale Engine 2 has been redesigned for TSMC's 7 nm manufacturing process - a severe improvement over the original's 16 nm. That Cerebras has moved on to TSMC's 7 nm for this giant, wafer-sized accelerator is telling of the confidence and state of yields on TSMC's 7 nm - if the process wasn't considered to be stable and guaranteeing incredibly good yields, I doubt such an effort would have been undertaken.

As the global economy enters the post-pandemic era, technologies including 5G, WiFi6/6E, and HPC (high-performance computing) have been advancing rapidly, in turn bringing about a fundamental, structural change in the semiconductor industry as well, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. While the demand for certain devices such as notebook computers and TVs underwent a sharp uptick due to the onset of the stay-at-home economy, this demand will return to pre-pandemic levels once the pandemic has been brought under control as a result of the global vaccination drive. Nevertheless, the worldwide shift to next-gen telecommunication standards has brought about a replacement demand for telecom and networking devices, and this demand will continue to propel the semiconductor industry, resulting in high capacity utilization rates across the major foundries. As certain foundries continue to expand their production capacities this year, TrendForce expects total foundry revenue to reach a historical high of US$94.6 billion this year, an 11% growth YoY.

OpenFive, a leading provider of customizable, silicon-focused solutions with differentiated IP, today announced the successful tape out of a high-performance SoC on TSMC's N5 process, with integrated IP solutions targeted for cutting edge High Performance Computing (HPC)/AI, networking, and storage solutions.

The SoC features an OpenFive High Bandwidth Memory (HBM3) IP subsystem and D2D I/Os, as well as a SiFive E76 32-bit CPU core. The HBM3 interface supports 7.2 Gbps speeds allowing high throughput memories to feed domain-specific accelerators in compute-intensive applications including HPC, AI, Networking, and Storage. OpenFive's low-power, low-latency, and highly scalable D2D interface technology allows for expanding compute performance by connecting multiple dice together using an organic substrate or a silicon interposer in a 2.5D package.

The global supply of semiconductor processors has been at risk lately. Starting from GPUs to CPUs, the demand for both has been much greater than the available supply. Manufacturing companies, such as TSMC, have been expanding capacities, however, they have not yet been able to satisfy the demand. We have seen the results of that demand in a form of the scarcity of the latest generation of graphics cards, covering NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3000 series Ampere, and AMD' Radeon RX 6000 series Big Navi graphics cards. Consumers have had a difficult time sourcing them and they have seen artificial price increase that is much higher than their original MSRP.

However, it doesn't seem like the situation will improve. According to the latest reporting from Bloomberg, the next victim of global chip shortage is... you guessed it, your home internet router. The cited sources have noted that the waiting list to get a batch of ordered routers has doubled the waiting time, from the regular 30 weeks to 60-week waiting time. This represents a waiting list that is more than a year long. With the global COVID-19 pandemic still going strong, there is an increased need for better home router equipment, and delays can only hurt broadband providers that supply routers. Taiwan-based router manufacturer Zyxel Communications, notes that the company has seen massive demand for their equipment. Such a massive demand could lead to insufficient supply, which could increase prices of routers well above their MSRP and bring scarcity of them as well.

Tianshu Zhixin, a Chinese startup company dedicated to designing advanced processors for accelerating various kinds of tasks, has officially entered the production of its latest GPGPU design. Called "Big Island" GPU, it is the company's entry into the GPU market, currently dominated by AMD, NVIDIA, and soon Intel. So what is so special about Tianshu Zhixin's Big Island GPU, making it so important? Firstly, it represents China's attempt of independence from the outside processor suppliers, ensuring maximum security at all times. Secondly, it is an interesting feat to enter a market that is controlled by big players and attempt to grab a piece of that cake. To be successful, the GPU needs to represent a great design.

And great it is, at least on paper. The specifications list that Big Island is currently being manufactured on TSMC's 7 nm node using CoWoS packaging technology, enabling the die to feature over 24 billion transistors. When it comes to performance, the company claims that the GPU is capable of crunching 37 TeraFLOPs of single-precision FP32 data. At FP16/BF16 half-precision, the chip is capable of outputting 147 TeraFLOPs. When it comes to integer performance, it can achieve 317, 147, and 295 TOPS in INT32, INT16, and IN8 respectively. There is no data on double-precision floating-point numbers, so the chip is optimized for single-precision workloads. There is also 32 GB of HBM2 memory present, and it has 1.2 TB of bandwidth. If we compare the chip to the competing offers like NVIDIA A100 or AMD MI100, the new Big Island GPU outperforms both at single-precision FP32 compute tasks, for which it is designed.Pictures of possible solutions follow.

In the past few years, Intel has struggled a lot with its semiconductor manufacturing. Starting from the 10 nm fiasco, the company delayed the new node for years and years, making it seem like it is never going to get delivered. The node was believed to be so advanced that it was unexpectedly hard to manufacture, giving the company more problems. Low yields have been present for a long time, and it is only recently that Intel has started shipping its 10 nm products. However, its competitor, TSMC, has been pumping out nodes at an amazing rate. At the time of writing, the Taiwanese giant is producing the 5 nm node, with a 4 nm node on the way.

So to remain competitive, Intel would need to apply a new tactic. The company has a 7 nm node in the works for 2023 when TSMC will switch to the 3 nm+ nodes. That represents a marketing problem, where the node naming convention is making Intel inferior to its competitors. To fix that, the company will likely start node renaming and give its nodes new names, that are corresponding to the industry naming conventions. We still have no information how will the new names look like, or if Intel will do it in the first place, so take this with a grain of salt.

TSMC, the world leader in semiconductor manufacturing, has reportedly begun with plans to start volume production of the 4 nm node by the end of this year. According to the sources over at DigiTimes, Taiwan's leading semiconductor manufacturer could be on the verge of starting volume production of an even smaller node. The new 4 nm node is internally referred to as a part of the N5 node generation. The N5 generation covers N5 (regular 5 nm), N5P (5 nm+), and N4 process that is expected to debut soon. And perhaps the most interesting thing is that the 4 nm process will be in high-volume production in Q4, with Apple expected to be one of the major consumers of the N5 node family.

DigiTimes reports that Apple will use the N5P node for the upcoming Apple A15 SoCs for next-generation iPhones, while the more advanced N4 node will find itself as a base of the new Macs equipped with custom Apple Silicon SoCs. To find out more, we have to wait for the official product launches and see just how much improvement new nodes bring.

Intel's problems with processor production, especially with newer nodes like 10 nm and 7 nm, have been widely known. The company has not been able to deliver the latest semiconductor process on time and has thus delayed many product launches. However, things are looking to take a complete U-turn and the hell will freeze. During the "Intel Unleashed: Engineering the Future" webcast event that happened yesterday, the company made several announcements regarding the 7 nm process and its viability. We have already reported that the company is working on the new Meteor Lake processor lineup for 2023, supposed to be manufactured on the fixed 7 nm node.

However, it seems like Intel will have to tap external capacities to manufacture a part of its processor production. The company has confirmed that it will use an unknown TSMC process to manufacture a part of the 2023 processor lineup. That means that Intel and TSMC have already established the needed capacity and that TSMC has already booked wafer capacity for Intel. This has never happened before, as Intel always kept its processor production under the company roof. However, given that there is a huge demand for new semiconductor processes, Intel has to look at external manufacturing options to keep up with the demand.

ASML has finally finished development of EUV (Extreme Ultra Violet) pellicles to be employed in manufacturing processes that use the most energetic frequency of visible light to etch semiconductors onto wafers. Pellicles have been used for decades in the industry, and they are basically ultra-thin membranes that protect photomasks during the etching process - impeding particles from depositing in the substrate, which could lead to defects at the wafer level for every subsequent patterning that is laid on top of the impurity. Manufacturers such as TSMC have deployed EUV-powered manufacturing processes, but they have had to toil with potentially lower yields and increased costs with wafer analysis so as to reduce chances of defects appearing.

It's been a long time coming for EUV-capable pellicles, because these have different requirements compared to their traditional, non-EUV counterparts. However, once they are available on the market, it's expected that all semiconductor manufacturers with bleeding-edge manufacturing processes integrate them into their production flows. These will allow for better yields, which in turn should reduce overall pricing for the manufacturing processes. As an example, these EUV masks could be deployed on TSMC's 7 nm, 6 nm, 5 nm, and so on and so on. Other players other than ASML are also finishing their pellicle design, so the industry will have multiple options to integrate into their processes.

Intel Graphics tweeted a marketing splash screen of its upcoming Xe HPG gaming discrete graphics architecture. There's not much to the video, except announcing the Xe HPG logo. It starts off with a depiction of the Xe LP architecture, on which the company's Gen12 iGPUs and Iris Xe MAX entry-level discrete GPUs are based; and swells into a larger silicon that grows in all directions. The animation could be a hint that Xe HPG chips will be an order of magnitude faster than the Iris Xe MAX, target serious gaming, and take the fight to both NVIDIA and AMD.

Intel is designing the Xe HPG graphics architecture for third-party silicon fabrication nodes, such as TSMC and Samsung, and could leverage a sub-10 nm node to significantly scale up from the Xe LP. A recent report pointed to the likelihood of 512 execution units on a certain Xe HPG variant (4,096 unified shaders) and contemporary GDDR6 memory, while Intel has the necessary IP to pull off DirectX 12 Ultimate logo readiness, including raytracing. Intel is likely eyeing a slice of the e-sports hardware segment, although a high-end GPU cannot be completely ruled out. Watch the video from the source link below.

Xilinx, Inc., the leader in adaptive computing, today announced the company has expanded its UltraScale+ portfolio for markets with new applications that require ultra-compact and intelligent edge solutions. With form factors that are 70 percent smaller than traditional chip-scale packaging, the new Artix and Zynq UltraScale+ devices can now address a wider range of applications within the industrial, vision, healthcare, broadcast, consumer, automotive, and networking markets.

As the world's only hardware adaptable cost-optimized portfolio based on 16 nanometer technology, Artix and Zynq UltraScale+ devices are available in TSMC's state-of-the-art InFO (Integrated Fan-Out) packaging technology. Using InFO, Artix and Zynq UltraScale+ devices meet the need for intelligent edge applications by delivering high-compute density, performance-per-watt, and scalability in compact packaging options.

The third-generation semiconductor industry was impaired by the US-China trade war and the COVID-19 pandemic successively from 2018 to 2020, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. During this period, the semiconductor industry on the whole saw limited upward momentum, in turn leading to muted growth for the 3rd gen semiconductor segment as well. However, this segment is likely to enter a rapid upturn owing to high demand from automotive, industrial, and telecom applications. In particular, the GaN power device market will undergo the fastest growth, with a $61 million revenue, a 90.6% YoY increase, projected for 2021.

The global supply chain of graphics cards is currently not very well equipped to handle the massive demand that exists for the latest generation of GPUs. Just like we have seen with the launch of NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3000 series Ampere, and AMD Radeon RX 6000 series Big Navi SKUs, the latest generation graphics cards are experiencing massive demand. And manufacturers of these GPUs are not very well equipped to handle it all, so there is a huge scarce for GPUs in the global market. With AMD's recent announcement of the Radeon RX 6700 XT graphics card, things are not looking any better, and the availability of this GPU could be very tight at launch.

According to information obtained by Igor's Lab, AMD could supply only a few thousand Radeon RX 6700 XT GPUs for Europe as a whole. To be precise, Igor's Lab notes that "If you condense the information of various board partners and distributors to a trend, then there are, depending on the manufacturer and model, only a few pieces (for Germany) to a few thousand for the EU as a whole." This could be a very bad indication of AMD's supply of these new GPUs globally, not just for Europe. The company is currently relying on the overbooked TSMC, which can only produce a limited amount of chips at the time, and we don't know how much capacity AMD allocated for the new chip.

We've all been reading multiple stories covering the current overly high demand compared to manufacturing capability for semiconductors. Some of us have actually felt this lack in supply not only in our pockets (for those who purchased above-MSRP graphics cards, CPUs or consoles). And apparently, TSMC has just made quite a deal more money out of this "extraordinary demand" than it usually does, as it's being reported the company has auctioned off "excess capacity" to an unknown third-party for 15-20% higher prices than they usually practice.

Now before we start lynching TSMC here, that can mean many things. There is a backlog of orders still to be filled for most manufacturers, that much the reports doing the rounds claim; however, the nature of semiconductor manufacturing occurs throughout many different nodes and technologies. It's more than likely that this doesn't mean that TSMC saved some wafers that could have been used for AMD's RX, Zen, or custom APUs for next-gen consoles on the side and decided to give them to another buyer. This likely means that TSMC had one or more nodes or manufacturing technologies that hadn't been pre-booked yet, and that some players might've looked at that as a solution to their semiconductor woes. And TSMC, having more than one interested party, auctioned the excess capacity. The rumor places the most likely candidates for the purchase as car manufacturers, who have also been hard by the lack of semiconductors in the market, and that's one business where it may make sense to order manufacturing on nodes other than the most cutting-edge; cars just don't need the latest, most powerful and greatest chips to run their software. But all in all, the result is this: a good day for TSMC.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), one of the largest manufacturers of silicon, is seemingly making plans to build as many as six of its US-based fabs in Arizona. According to the unconfirmed report coming from UDN, TSMC could be building its Arizona-based factories for much larger capacities. Based on TSMC's classifications, the MegaFab-class of factories is the one with 25,000 WSPM output. According to the report, TSMC plans to build six additional facilities in the area where the Arizona fab is, and have a GigaFab-class (even larger type) factory present on US soil. Currently, the company operates six GigaFabs and all of them are based in Taiwan.

The GigaFab class factory is supposed to have over 100,000 WSPM output, and by building one in the US, TSMC could get much closer to big customers like Apple, NVIDIA, and AMD. Reports are saying that TSMC's primary target is 3 nm node production on 12-inch (300 mm) wafers. All six of the supposed facilities are expected to output more than 100,000 wafers at their peak, making it one of the largest projects TSMC has ever done. The Arizona location is supposed to serve as a "mega fab" facility and it is supposed to start manufacturing silicon in 2024. This information is, of course, just a rumor so you should take it with a grain of salt, as this type of information is usually only known by top-level management.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the leading provider of semiconductors, is supposed to start 3 nm node production this year. While Samsung, one of the top three leading semiconductor foundries, has been struggling with the pandemic and delayed its 3 nm node for 2022, TSMC has managed to deliver it this year. According to a report, the Taiwanese semiconductor giant is preparing the 3 nm node for the second half of this year, with the correct date of high-volume product unknown. The expected wafer capacity for the new node is supposed to be around 30,000 wafers per month, with capacity expansion expected to hit around 105,000 wafers per month in 2023. This is similar to 5 nm's current numbers of 105,000 wafers per month output, which was 90,000 just a few months ago in Q4 2020. One of the biggest customers of the upcoming 3 nm node is Apple.

It appears that Intel's DG2 refers to a number of HPG (High Performance Graphics) products within the same family, with rumors surfacing around a possible total of six different graphics products based on the company's latest high performance graphics architecture - and its debut on the high performance discrete market. It's been confirmed that Intel's DG2 products will not be manufactured in-house, via Intel's 10 nm SuperFin technology, but with recourse to foundry partner TSMC's 6 nm fabrication technology.

It seems that DG2 is currently slated for launch based on three different chip configurations: the first is the DG2 512EU, which will power the highest-performance, 4096 shading unit, 8 GB / 16 GB GDDR6 and 192-bit bus graphics card. Another chip is the DG12 384EU, estimated to come in at ~190 mm², available in three different shading unit configurations: 3072 shading units, with an accompanying 6/12 GB of GDDR6 memory and 192-bit bus; 2048 shading units, which reduces allotted memory to 4/8 GB configurations and a 128-bit memory bus; and finally, the further cut-down 1536 shading unit configuration, with a maximum of 4 GB of GDDR6 memory over the same 128-bit bus. The final (current) chip in the DG2 family is the DG2 128EU, with both 128EU and 96EU configurations (1024 and 768 shading units, respectively) carrying 4 GB VRAM over a pretty tight 64-bit bus. We'll see if these leaks actually materialize into final Intel products, and if these design choices are the possible best, considering Intel's technology, so as to assail the two-player party that is the discrete, high performance graphics market.

SiPearl has this week announced their collaboration with Open-Silicon Research, the India-based entity of OpenFive, to produce the next-generation SoC designed for HPC purposes. SiPearl is a part of the European Processor Initiative (EPI) team and is responsible for designing the SoC itself that is supposed to be a base for the European exascale supercomputer. In the partnership with Open-Silicon Research, SiPearl expects to get a service that will integrate all the IP blocks and help with the tape out of the chip once it is done. There is a deadline set for the year 2023, however, both companies expect the chip to get shipped by Q4 of 2022.

When it comes to details of the SoC, it is called Rhea and it will be a 72-core Arm ISA based processor with Neoverse Zeus cores interconnected by a mesh. There are going to be 68 mesh network L3 cache slices in between all of the cores. All of that will be manufactured using TSMC's 6 nm extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) technology for silicon manufacturing. The Rhea SoC design will utilize 2.5D packaging with many IP blocks stitched together and HBM2E memory present on the die. It is unknown exactly what configuration of HBM2E is going to be present. The system will also see support for DDR5 memory and thus enable two-level system memory by combining HBM and DDR. We are excited to see how the final product looks like and now we wait for more updates on the project.

Demand in the global foundry market remains strong in 1Q21, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. As various end-products continue to generate high demand for chips, clients of foundries in turn stepped up their procurement activities, which subsequently led to a persistent shortage of production capacities across the foundry industry. TrendForce therefore expects foundries to continue posting strong financial performances in 1Q21, with a 20% YoY growth in the combined revenues of the top 10 foundries, while TSMC, Samsung, and UMC rank as the top three in terms of market share. However, the future reallocation of foundry capacities still remains to be seen, since the industry-wide effort to accelerate the production of automotive chips may indirectly impair the production and lead times of chips for consumer electronics and industrial applications.

TSMC has been maintaining a steady volume of wafer inputs at its 5 nm node, and these wafer inputs are projected to account for 20% of the company's revenue. On the other hand, owing to chip orders from AMD, Nvidia, Qualcomm, and MediaTek, demand for TSMC's 7 nm node is likewise strong and likely to account for 30% of TSMC's revenue, a slight increase from the previous quarter. On the whole, TSMC's revenue is expected to undergo a 25% increase YoY in 1Q21 and set a new high on the back of surging demand for 5G, HPC, and automotive applications.