AMD to usurp Apple as TSMC's largest 7nm customer

[HEXUS]

Meanwhile, Apple A14 SoCs will start rolling off TSMC's 5nm lines from Q2 this year.

Read more.

[Hoonigan]

What is 140,000 WPM please? Sounds like a typing challenge to me.

[lumireleon]

What is 140,000 WPM please? Sounds like a typing challenge to me.

110,000 to 140,000 wafer starts per month (WPM) in H2 2020.

[Tabbykatze]

Wow, go AMD!

[watercooled]

The comparison to Samsung is interesting. Granted I've not been following the market all that closely but it's surprising to read that Samsung apparently have more 7nm capacity than TSMC, with a view to massively increase? I wonder who's using that sort of volume at Samsung at the moment? I know there's talk of Nvidia and maybe even Intel using Samsung for 7nm going forward but TSMC seemed to attract most of the big names for this generation - AMD, HiSilicon, Qualcomm, Apple, etc.

[edmundhonda]

I wonder who's using that sort of volume at Samsung at the moment?

Mobile? Samsung's own Exynos SOCs, some Snapdragons, who knows what else.

[DanceswithUnix]

So Apple might still be TSMC's largest customer, they just moved to 5nm.

[watercooled]

Mobile? Samsung's own Exynos SOCs, some Snapdragons, who knows what else.

Even so I don't know how that adds up to more than TSMC's entire capacity, or even a significant part of that. Top-end Exynos are used in little else besides some versions of their own phones, and the Snapdragon SoCs produced by Samsung are not on 7nm IIRC.

So Apple might still be TSMC's largest customer, they just moved to 5nm.

Yeah, reading between the lines I thought that too. Still, it's significant that they're consuming more capacity than many of the other big names at 7nm.

[Yoyoyo69]

So Apple might still be TSMC's largest customer, they just moved to 5nm.

Yeah, the title is misleading.

Apple moving production results in AMD becoming largest 7nm customer.

Still a large throw from anyones expectations a few year back. Very glad to see them continuing their positive push forward.

[tygrus]

Stupid headline .. Apple is still the largest customer of the best TSMC wafers. Apple is moving to TSMC 5nm and leaving AMD to the now 'old' 7nm. It sounds silly to call 7nm 'old' but it's the way the FAB world has gone since IC's were invented. AMD has been taking market share from Intel but that creates a problem. How to get enough FAB output from 3rd party to fulfil CPU orders.

[watercooled]

That's not necessarily the whole story though - many of these newer processes start off better suited to mobile applications, so 5nm isn't even necessarily desirable for AMD at this early stage given there is no one 'best' process node. 7nm EUV exists for a reason. Look how AMD/Nvidia never really touched the 20nm or 10nm nodes.