The Taiwanese corporation TSMC has postponed the start of production of 3-nm chips for six months. This was reported by research firm TrendForce.

The postponement is due to the fact that Intel, which has agreed with TSMC to use the 3nm process technology in the GPU for Meteor Lake, has pushed back the release of GPUs from the first half of 2023 to the second. Production was previously expected to start in the second half of 2022, but due to issues with product design and process validation, the schedule has been pushed back. Another postponement means that TSMC will not start production of 3nm chips for Intel until the second half of next year.

This decision influenced TSMC's production expansion plan, as among the first wave (second half of 2022-first half of 2023) of the company's 3nm process technology customers, only Apple remained with M-series and A17 Bionic chips. TSMC has slowed its expansion to avoid idle space and is set to cut its capital expenditure forecast, analysts say.

Other TSMC customers using advanced processes, including AMD, MediaTek and Qualcomm, are consistently planning to mass-produce 3nm products in 2024. The new 2024 iPhone will also use 3nm chips. All this will give a strong impetus to the use of TSMC's 3nm capacities in 2024.

In June, Samsung was the first in the world to mass-produce 3nm chips. The new solution will be used to produce processors designed for servers, data centers, as well as advanced chipsets for smartphones, tablets, wearables, laptops, desktops and other electronics.

bbabo.Net