TSMC may start production at its Arizona chip plant as early as next year, and Apple and Nvidia are expected to become the first customers.
CTOnews.com December 5 news, according to Nikkei Asia report, people familiar with the matter said that Apple and Nvidia will become TSMC's first customers in Arizona chip factory. It is reported that the plant will start production as early as the end of next year.
At the urging of U.S. customers such as Apple, TSMC will produce 4-nanometer chips at its Arizona plant in 2024, Bloomberg reported last week, according to people familiar with the matter. The company is expected to announce the new plan when U.S. President Joe Biden visits the plant on Tuesday.
TSMC initially planned to produce 20,000 wafers per month in Arizona, but now aims to double capacity and produce more advanced chips there, sources said. The initial plan was to manufacture the chips using TSMC's 5-nanometer and 4-nanometer process technology currently used to produce the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro processor chips. Under the new plan, the Arizona plant will eventually re-produce 20,000 wafers per month using 3-nanometer technology. Earlier, TSMC founder Zhang Zhongmou also confirmed that the Arizona plant will also produce 3nm chips, but the time has not yet been determined.
The investment in the 3-nanometer expansion is likely to be larger than TSMC's $12 billion investment in the first phase of the plant, but capacity will be further adjusted according to customer demand, the source said.
Earlier, Apple CEO Tim Cook mentioned in a meeting with German employees that "Apple has decided that some chips will be purchased from the Arizona factory, which will be operational from 2024. Apple's latest chips are manufactured on a 5nm process, and moving to more advanced processes will further improve performance and energy efficiency.
CTOnews.com has learned that Samsung and Intel are also expanding their chip production footprints in the United States on a large scale. Samsung is building a $17 billion chip factory in Texas, while Intel is building a new $20 billion plant in Arizona and another $20 billion plant in Ohio.
