TSMC s investment of 200 billion 3nm chips was boycotted, and Qualcomm and MediaTek abandoned it

Mondo Technology Updated on 2024-01-30

TSMC's investment of 200 billion 3nm chips was boycotted, and Qualcomm and MediaTek abandoned it

As we all know, the Apple A17Pro is the world's first 3nmSoC mobile phone.

According to the law of the past, after the introduction of the new foundry process, Apple took the lead in adopting it, and then Qualcomm, MediaTek, Samsung, etc. followed up, with the use of the new process, it will not make the Android chip too far behind the Apple chip, so that the Android mobile phone is competitive.

Unexpectedly, the situation has changed this year, although the 3nm process has arrived, but in addition to Apple, the new chips of the other three major manufacturers are still using last year's 4nm process and have not been upgraded to 3nm.

For example, Qualcomm Snapdragon 8Gen3, MediaTek and Tianyu 9300, and Samsung Exynos2400 exhibited some time ago are all 4nm chips, and they have not learned from Apple and use 3nm chips.

This makes TSMC very embarrassed, because entering the 3nm process, TSMC's investment cost exceeds 30 billion US dollars, equivalent to more than 200 billion yuan, if no one uses it, when will this cost be recovered?

Apple has a lot of orders, but it can not contribute much to TSMC, according to the third quarter data, the 3nm process contributed 6% of revenue, much lower than the 9% of 5nm's nm.

Why don't companies such as Qualcomm, MediaTek, and Samsung use the 3nm process?The reason is very simple, that is, the 3nm process is too useless, it is very uneconomical to use it, Apple has already eaten the first crab, Qualcomm, MediaTek, etc. found this crab difficult to eat, so they gave up.

From the point of view of power consumption, A17 is not much better than A16, from the performance point of view, the CPU has only increased by 3%-5%, the GPU is indeed in place, but there is one more core, and the two most critical cores have not been improved, so what is the point?

So Qualcomm and MediaTek are very smart, since the performance has not been improved, the power consumption has not been reduced, and the cost has been reduced by 20%-50%, so what should I use, why should I be cut by leeks, TSMC, and Samsung?

The funniest thing is actually Samsung, its own 3nm process, its own chips are not used, it says let other manufacturers think, will other manufacturers use it?If you don't believe in yourself, others will believe in youSo I really don't know what Samsung thinks, and then it just talks nonsense, you have to use it first, otherwise no one will use it.

According to Moore's Law, the performance of the chip will double every 18-24 months, otherwise it will be halved, from 5nm to 3nm, more than 18 months, but the performance has not doubled, and it has not been halved.

So where do we go from here, continue to invest heavily in 2nm, 1nm?It is estimated that it will be the same as 3nm, the money is spent, the effect is not good, and the manufacturer is not willing to use it, so what should I do?

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