“AMD, Apple and Nvidia want to purchase fewer chips from TSMC”
AMD, Apple and Nvidia want TSMC to make fewer chips for them, DigiTimes reports based on their own sources. AMD and Apple will actually get fewer chips from TSMC, but TSMC wouldn’t want to do this for Nvidia.
Demand for consumer products such as smartphones and PC components has fallen faster than expected in recent months, say the DigiTimes sources. Therefore, manufacturers now have too much stock and the prices of these products are falling. To counter the fall in prices, manufacturers have asked TSMC to make fewer chips.
For example, Apple initially planned to make an initial batch of 90 million iPhone 14 smartphones, but the company would have reduced this by ten percent. Apple has therefore asked TSMC to make fewer chips.
AMD has asked the chipmaker to make 20,000 fewer 6nm and 7nm wafers in the last quarter of this year and the first quarter of next year. These chips are used in the manufacturer’s processors and GPUs. AMD has not reduced orders for 5nm chips, according to the sources.
Nvidia would also have asked TSMC to supply fewer chips, but TSMC did not want this according to the sources. Nvidia paid TSMC extra to be assured of capacity, after having previously had chips made by Samsung. However, now Nvidia still has too many current-generation GPUs in stock and second-hand mining video cards are being sold, because it is less profitable to mine cryptocurrencies.
It concerns an order of 5nm chips for the RTX40 series GPUs, which Nvidia wanted to reduce. TSMC does not want to do this, according to DigiTimes, but instead proposes delaying production by one or two quarters, until the first quarter of next year. In addition, Nvidia is responsible for finding another customer who can use TSMC’s production capacity.
Despite reduced demand from the three companies, TSMC remains positive, according to DigiTimes sources. Demand from the automotive and supercomputer sectors remains strong; in some cases the demand is greater than what TSMC can produce.