Does TSMC's sudden "change of face" mean market volatility?
As early as the beginning of the 21st century, TSMC and ASML were still small companies, and their position in the semiconductor field was also negligible.
Until now, TSMC has become an international market"OEM brother", and ASML also monopolizes the world's EUV lithography machine, but now there are foreign media reports: TSMC suddenly"Change face"up?What the hell is going on?
In fact, during the development of TSMC, the United States did not spend a lot of financial resources to build factories, so most of the foundry needs were allocated to TSMC and Samsung.
Especially after making an effective breakthrough based on TSMC's advanced manufacturing process, it can be said that all the advanced process chips on the market are from TSMC, such as Qualcomm, MediaTek, Intel, NVIDIA, etc.
With TSMC's efforts and step-by-step development, it has gradually begun to achieve good results in recent years, according to public data, in 2022, TSMC accounted for more than 60% of the orders in the chip foundry market.
Naturally, most of the orders came from the United States, even accounting for 90%, which shows the importance of TSMC to the former United States.
On the other hand, Samsung's situation seems to be much worse: since the first half of 2022, Samsung has come out of the low yield rate of advanced process chips, in contrast, TSMC's Samsung has gradually declined in the market.
Until today, the yield rate of the 3nm process is only 20%, and many customers no longer use Samsung's advanced process foundry, including Qualcomm, one of the American giants, has chosen to hand over to TSMC foundry.
As a result, TSMC's position in the market seems to be becoming more and more prosperous, and the United States is gradually feeling it"Stuck neck"According to the data, the number of chips in the United States accounted for more than 37% of the global market, but now it has dropped to 12%, which shows that the former hegemony of the United States in the semiconductor field is gradually dissipating.
To this end, the United States chose to start improving the technology and strength of local chip foundries, and proposed a total of $250 billion in subsidies, including $52.7 billion in subsidies for the semiconductor field.
These include Samsung, SK hynix, and TSMC to encourage and attract these companies to build factories in the United States and receive subsidies.
He said that in the future, the United States will be the only country in the global market that has the ability to produce advanced process chips, so as long as it has the ability to produce high-quality chips, semiconductor companies need to build factories in American production bases.
This wave of so-called"Future prophecies"In fact, it is more like a deterrent, catering to what the United States has taken based on decades of semiconductor supremacy"Do whatever it takes"but it also scares a lot of businesses.
Since TSMC has not been on the side of the mainland, and there is no national support behind it, it has to choose to build a factory in the United States and invest 43.5 billion US dollars"Give"It has a series of dilemmas and problems.
One is that the chip subsidy ratio has been reduced, only 10%, and compared with the investment of $43.5 billion, the subsidy of $3.9 billion is a drop in the bucket.
The second is the withdrawal of American capital, less than three months after the construction of the factory in the United States, a group of American capital led by the former stock god Warren Buffett chose to withdraw their capital, which caused the evaporation of 180 billion market value for TSMC.
Third, the orders of the two major U.S. giants, Apple and Intel, have changed, Apple has reduced orders for 120,000 wafers, including 3nm process chips, and Intel has postponed the order demand for 3nm process chips.
Through various situations after going to the United States to build a factory, TSMC has finally seen the old of the United States"face", but also understand that after all, it is a foreign-funded enterprise, and even after the establishment of a factory in the United States, the American side will not treat itself"Pro-son"treatment.
For the American side"Pro-son"South Korea also has its own views on treatment, one is that the original plan to build a factory in Germany has been postponed, and the new factory construction plan is expected to be implemented in 2025.
The second is to restart the 28nm process wafer factory in Nanjing, in order to seek the most mature process chips in the mainland 28nm process market, and contribute value to domestic self-sufficiency in the early period before the 28nm process is in short supply.
Obviously, TSMC is determined that only the mainland of the motherland is the most suitable choice, and restarting the 28nm mature process chip is the first step to return to the mainland, so foreign media have reported that TSMC has begun"Change face"。
But unfortunately, the most lacking in China is not the 28nm process chip, based on the gradual advancement of SMIC's four newly expanded factories, there are already two factories in mass production, and it is the main 28nm process, so for China there is no need for TSMC to pay.
On the contrary, in the direction of advanced process chips, TSMC's return to build factories will bring good strength to domestic progress and solve the dilemma that advanced process chips cannot be produced independently.