news

한어Русский языкEnglishFrançaisIndonesianSanskrit日本語DeutschPortuguêsΕλληνικάespañolItalianoSuomalainenLatina

New Intelligence Report

Editor: Editorial Department

【New Wisdom Introduction】The market value of TSMC, the world's largest semiconductor foundry, exceeded $1 trillion this week. The company will release its second-quarter earnings report later this month, which will lead to another wave of stock surges. Its 2nm chip is also progressing smoothly and will be put into trial production as early as next week, earlier than market expectations.

Technology giant Nvidia has been riding the wave of artificial intelligence and has become one of the world's most valuable companies.

When one prospers, all prosper. Nvidia's suppliers and upstream partners also take advantage of the opportunity.

Just recently, the market value of TSMC, the chip manufacturer of Apple and Nvidia, briefly exceeded the $1 trillion mark, becoming the top in Asia, 6.5 times that of Intel!

There will be one more seat in the trillion-dollar club.

It fell back to $956.93 billion on Wednesday

The stock has risen nearly 80% this year, making TSMC the world's eighth most valuable company by market value.

TSMC will release its second-quarter earnings report later this month, and analysts predict that the company's stock will rise again once the report is released, and TSMC will then secure its position in the trillion-dollar club.

Rare goods are in short supply, hunger marketing

It is estimated that 90% of the world's most advanced processor chips are produced by TSMC alone, and it is also the only supplier of key advanced chips to companies such as Nvidia and Apple.

In addition to Nvidia and Apple, TSMC also supplies AMD, Broadcom, Intel and Qualcomm.

These processors are in high demand, and most of the time, TSMC has no competition.

The process technologies of Intel Foundry and Samsung Foundry cannot provide the transistor density, performance and power efficiency that match the chips produced by TSMC.

Morgan Stanley analysts led by Charlie Chan said on Sunday that TSMC is sending the message that leading-edge foundry supply could be tight in 2025.

If customers do not "appreciate TSMC's value," they may not be able to obtain adequate capacity allocation.

Analysts call this strategy "hunger marketing."

Last month, TSMC CEO Wei Zhejia hinted that the company was considering raising product prices.

But Nvidia's Jen-Hsun Huang doesn't seem to mind TSMC's price hike.

Huang said that the market demand for Nvidia's chips is so great that he is worried about how to distribute them "fairly".

It seems that what is transmitted from upstream to downstream is not only chips, but also the "hunger marketing" routine.

Waiting for financial report to consolidate position

The market demand for advanced processors for artificial intelligence has never been more urgent, as evidenced by the sales of the world's largest foundry.

TSMC expects the market to grow 250% this year.

Additionally, TSMC's revenue in the second half of the year is typically higher than sales in the first half of the year, as companies like Apple, AMD and Intel typically start ramping up production of their latest processors starting in the second quarter.

Of course, TSMC's recent rise in market value is the result of growing demand for AI processors, particularly orders from Nvidia and Broadcom.

Last month, Nvidia became the world's most valuable company, although it was quickly surpassed by Apple and Microsoft.

TSMC has been on a tear with the help of Nvidia. In comparison, Intel, which can challenge TSMC in terms of production capacity, has a market value of only US$145.98 billion.

This is surprising because Intel is also a major customer of TSMC and the world's largest supplier of PC microprocessors.

It is worth noting that TSMC is the first Asian company to have a market value of over one trillion US dollars (albeit briefly). Amid strong confidence and optimism in the investment market, TSMC's upcoming financial report will help it consolidate its position in the trillion-dollar club.

Financial reports are one aspect. As a global leader in semiconductor technology, TSMC's confidence comes from its far-leading chip manufacturing process, and it always leads the market in technological innovation.

2nm chips are about to be trial-produced

As early as April this year, news came out that TSMC had decided to produce a new generation of 2nm processor chips.

TSMC said that the product portfolio of the 2nm process will be quite similar to that of the 3nm process, which means that its terminal applications will still be dominated by smartphones and high-performance computing (HPC).

A latest supply chain report from ETNews stated that TSMC will begin trial production of 2nm chips next week and start mass production next year.

The Baoshan factory located in the Hsinchu Science Park in the north began to introduce and install 2nm production equipment in the second quarter and already has the equipment and components needed for the testing phase.

It is understood that the Baoshan factory is speeding up the process to ensure a stable yield before mass production.

TSMC plans to apply all-around gate (GAA) technology starting from the 2nm process, which is expected to improve performance and energy efficiency. It also plans to introduce back side power supply (BSPR) technology.

In the first half of 2024, 99% of the world's artificial intelligence semiconductors will be produced by TSMC; in the second half of this year, more AI and high-performance computing (HPC) semiconductors are expected to be mass-produced using TSMC's 3nm and 5nm processes.

Apple: Click here to place your order!

TSMC has long maintained a close partnership with Apple, supplying chips for electronic products such as iPhones, iPads and Macs.

After all these years, TSMC is still the only company capable of producing 2nm and 3nm chips at the scale and quality required by Apple.

However, when you have as deep pockets as Apple, you are in a better position to negotiate with suppliers like TSMC.

According to Apple's usual style of being keen on rolling in hardware facilities, Apple will be the first major customer of 2nm chips, and products such as iPhone 17 may be the first to be equipped with 2nm chips.

Apple’s current flagship iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max both use the 3nm A17 chip, and the M4 chip that recently debuted in the new iPad Pro also uses an enhanced version of 3nm technology.

The 2nm process can accommodate more transistors in a smaller space, thereby improving efficiency and performance. Compared with 3nm chips, performance is expected to increase by 10%-15% and power consumption will be reduced by 30%.

Compared with the M4 chip, the M5 chip will provide better performance while reducing power consumption, which will greatly improve the user experience for laptops and iPads.

The A18 chip in the iPhone 17 lineup is expected to have a similar performance boost.

References:

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/tsmcs-market-cap-is-on-track-to-reach-dollar1-trillion-65-times-larger-than-intel

https://www.businessinsider.com/chip-tsmc-taiwan-semiconductor-trillion-market-cap-nvidia-ai-asml-2024-7

https://wccftech.com/tsmc-to-begin-trial-production-of-2nm-chips-next-week/