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TSMC to Spend $100B on Fabs and R&D Over Next Three Years: 2nm, Arizona Fab & More
TSMC this week has announced plans to spend $100 billion on new production facilities as well as R&D over the next three years. The world's largest contract maker of chips says that its fabs are currently working at full load, so to meet demand for its services going forward it will need (much) more capacity. Among TSMC's facilities to go online in the next three to four years are the company's fab in Arizona as well as its first 2nm-capable fab in Taiwan.
[...] TSMC's capital expenditures (CapEx) budget last year was $17.2 billion, whereas its R&D budget was $3.72 billion, or approximately 8.2% of its revenue. This year the company intends to increase its CapEx to somewhere in the range of $25 to $28 billion, which would make for a 45% to 62% year-over-year increase in that spending. The company's R&D spending will also rise as its revenue is expected to grow. In total, TSMC plans to invest around $30 billion or more on CapEx and R&D this year. Taken altogether, if the company intends to spend around $100 billion from 2021 through 2023, its expenditures in the next two years will be roughly flat with 2021, something that should please its investors.
SK Hynix to Build $106 Billion Fab Cluster: 800,000 Wafer Starts a Month
Capping off a busy week for fab-related news, South Korea authorities this week gave SK Hynix a green light to build a new, 120 trillion won ($106.35 billion) fab complex. The fab cluster will be primarily used to build DRAM for PCs, mobile devices, and servers, using process technologies that rely on extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV). The first fab in the complex will go online in 2025.
[...] The new fabs will be used to make various types of DRAM using SK Hynix's upcoming production technologies that will use extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography. And with a start date still years away, we're likely looking at a fab that will be used to manufacture DDR5, LPDDR5X, and other future types of DRAM.
See also: TSMC bumps spending up 50% to meet increased demand
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 04 2021, @11:56AM (6 children)
Higher prices, of course.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 04 2021, @12:24PM (3 children)
Except all this extra capacity is going to create excess supply, driving prices down... especially when new variants of COVID wipe out 50% of the population.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday April 04 2021, @03:27PM (2 children)
Because? Present variants of covid are at least two orders of magnitude shy of being able to do that - even if everyone got it. What makes the new variants so special?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 04 2021, @04:36PM (1 child)
Wait until you see the new Spring 2021 models from Wuhan Labs!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday April 04 2021, @05:21PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 04 2021, @12:41PM
Given China's actions in Hong Kong and the South China Sea, higher prices could be worth it.
The cost is a reasonable percentage of cash flow and outside sources will undoubtly help.
While the move to production diversity seems essential, history shows it may lead us to an overcapacity situation.
Setting up a bleeding edge line is a non-trivial exercise. It ain't over till these are running with good yields.
Paying is not the main issue here, it appears that China's efforts with force are turning out to have been a shot in the foot.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Sunday April 04 2021, @02:31PM
TSMC Rumored To Hike Chip Prices By 25% By 2021 End As Alleged Workers Receive No Overtime Pay [wccftech.com]
Wafer prices aren't that significant when compared to the prices of the more expensive consumer products (e.g. the Ryzen 7 5800X), but it could have an larger effect on the budget end of things (e.g. the Ryzen 3 3100, which doesn't make much sense from a yield perspective - "7nm" yields are too good).
However, as Apple gets first dibs on increasingly smaller nodes, their leftovers will eventually become the budget nodes. By the time AMD is making chips on TSMC "3nm", "7nm" will decrease in price and will remain just fine for cheaper products or I/O chiplets.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]