A market research firm out of Taiwan TrendForce recently enunciated on the chip market and supply chain, on August 5 Intel postponed the Meteor Lake CPU production, which was expected to start in the latter half of the year 2022, to the first half of the year 2023. The main prospect in the chip market for Intel and others, TSMC has had to cancel its 3-nm product manufacturing plan for the upcoming year 2023 as a result. Previously, the Taiwanese chip firm had announced that the manufacturing is predicted to start in the latter half of the year 2022.
According to some of the industry experts and sources, the situations in Intel and TSMC can be good news on Samsung Electronics’ part as it is currently the only one capable of supplying 3-nm products to fabless companies. “Samsung Electronics is already supplying those products to at least two clients and the demand is expected to keep rising faster than Samsung Electronics’ capacity expansion,” one of them explained, adding, “In addition, Samsung Electronics will be able to widen its advanced process gap with TSMC if it develops and manufactures second-generation 3-nm products as planned.”
“TSMC decided to slow down facility expansion in order to prevent an excessively idle capacity and it is currently reducing equipment orders for 2023 after high costs were incurred in relation to 3-nm process investment,” TrendForce said, adding, “This is likely to affect its 2023 capital expenditures and its 2023 sales are likely to grow at a slow pace.”
Intel’s 14-generation Meteor Lake CPU was predicted to be manufactured based on the Taiwanese company TSMC’s 3-nm chips. More recently however according to an Intel announcement, it would produce 2-nm chips on its own starting in the year 2024, which makes it an unlikely scenario that the company will use TSMC’s 3-nm wafers, on the other hand, Apple might stick to their plan of using TSMC’s 3-nm chips for iPhone 15 which is expected to launch in 2023.
