TSMC can be said to be the most powerful semiconductor foundry company at present, and its annual revenue and profits are also rising, in addition, TSMC also said that it plans to mass-produce 2nm process technology in 2025, and there are already manufacturers who intend to use TSMC's process, including Apple. There is news that Apple, which has deep pockets, is preparing to adopt the 2nm process in future processors, and TSMC is also willing to reserve some 2nm production capacity for Apple. In addition to this, Intel also seems to be interested in TSMC's 2nm process.
According to foreign media reports, although Intel has been clamoring to surpass TSMC in its own process technology, it seems to be quite difficult now, especially the graphics card part, almost all of which are OEM, and TSMC may also OEM the GPU part of Intel processors in the future. It is reported that Intel's future nova lake will be equipped with TSMC's process technology, thus becoming another major customer of TSMC 2nm in addition to Apple.
Intel Nova Lake is likely to be the biggest architectural change in the last decade, even bigger than the current Core architecture, after all, the Intel Core architecture has been updated and iterated for many years, and it is no longer in line with today's usage needs. In addition, according to Intel's own statement, the latest 18A process that has been revealed to the public will be mass-produced in 2024, while the launch of the Nova Lake processor is expected to be in 2026. There is a high probability that the CPU part of the Intel Nova Lake processor is still self-developed, while the GPU is TSMC's 2nm process, and the IO and NPU modules are still their own processes, after all, with the launch of Core Ultra, Intel's future processors look more like building blocks, and different processing units use different process processes, which can maximize production efficiency and reduce costs at the same time.
It can only be said that TSMC is still powerful in the field of wafer foundry, even a giant like Intel has to cooperate with TSMC, of course, there are still 2 years before 2026, and there are of course greater variables about what process to use.