Taiwanese company TSMC has been supplying customers with first-generation 3nm chips for several months, Apple is expected to receive the bulk of them, and the situation will not change until the end of this year, according to informed sources. Intel won’t get 3nm chips from TSMC until next year.
Image source: MacRumors
According to some changes in the plans of Intel MacRumors with reference to publication DigiTimesforced the company to postpone contracting for the production of 3nm crystals for its own use until next year. Apple can now claim 100% of TSMC’s 3nm chip quota for the remainder of the year. However, in absolute terms, TSMC’s plans to release 3nm products also had to be scaled back due to Intel’s actions.
In the fourth quarter of this year, the source explains, instead of the previously planned 80-100,000 monthly processed silicon wafers with 3nm chips, the company will only produce 50-60,000 such silicon wafers. TSMC is now able to process 65,000 3nm silicon wafers per month. In fact, core product production will even decline slightly through the fourth quarter.
TSMC is also preparing to offer its customers the enhanced N3E process technology. Apple components are also among the first to migrate to it, but in bulk, production of the relevant components will not begin until 2024, according to Taiwanese sources. It is believed that Apple, as TSMC’s first and largest customer in this segment, enjoys some privileges in terms of the payment system for finished products without wasting money on buying back defective products.
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