The IT giants will need to secure production capacities at ever higher prices.
TSMC is currently ahead of its main competitors – Samsung or Intel – and is already turning to the 3nm engraving process. Compared to 5 nm, the price of wafers however, is still increasing significantly.
In 2004, the wafer 90nm was $2,000…
Relayed by TechPowerUpthe information comes from the site DigiTimes which evokes a still very significant increase in the price of wafers while TSMC is gradually turning to 3 nm.
Our colleagues publish a very interesting graph showing that the cost of wafers has only increased following quite logically the investments made by the main companies in the sector.
In 2004, a wafer 90 nm was charged $2,000 by TSMC, which multiplied its prices by 1.5, ten years later, on the 28 nm process. In 2016, only twelve years later, the cost of wafers doubled to $6,000 with the 10nm.
…it will cost 10 times more for one wafer 3 nm in 2022
Two years later, in 2018 therefore, we still have to multiply the cost of wafers by 1.67 – or 10,000 dollars – to take advantage of an engraving fineness of 7 nm and inflation then took off with the switch to 5 nm.
Undoubtedly faced with unforeseen investments, TSMC effectively set the prices for wafers 5nm at $16,000. According to the sources of DigiTimesthe increase would flatten out a little with “only” 20,000 dollars for wafers in 3 nm.
The fact remains that this passage cannot concern all the production lines of the Taiwanese manufacturer simultaneously and that companies such as Apple, AMD or NVIDIA will have to secure their supplies. With inflation in the price of wafer around 25%, there will necessarily be repercussions.
Beyond any questioning about the margins of each other, it is to be expected that the prices of the next generations of CPUs or GPUs in 3 nm will be significantly higher.
Source : TechPowerUp
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