It is reported that the trial production of TSMC's American factory in the first quarter of next year has been ordered by three local customers.
CTOnews.com December 21 news, according to TechNews reports, TSMC's Fab21 plant in Arizona, USA is currently in the intensive equipment installation and commissioning phase, and has started the construction of a small-scale trial production line, and has received orders from three US customers.
Industry sources at Pexels said the Fab21 plant is scheduled to start trial production in the first quarter of 2024, mainly from orders from U.S. customers.
According to the report, among the current US customers of TSMC Fab21 factory, in addition to NVIDIA, there are indications that Intel will outsource core computing to TSMC's N3B process and may place orders with Fab21 factory.
CTOnews.com previously reported that TSMC announced the construction of 12-inch wafer Fab21 in Arizona as early as 2020, and is expected to start formal equipment installation in the first quarter of 2024 and mass production by the end of 2024. The initial phase of Fab21 will be produced using a 5-nanometer process with a capacity of 20000 wafers per month.
TSMC later upgraded the initial process from 5 nanometers to 4 nanometers. However, due to a shortage of skilled installers in the region, TSMC postponed the mass production start date to 2025.
In addition, the second phase of the project is currently planned for mass production in 2026, introducing a 3-nanometer process. The total investment for these two phases is $40 billion.
Industry sources also acknowledge that Fab21 is expensive to manufacture and its capacity cannot compete with TSMC's existing plant, and there are also reports that the plant does not have packaging capacity.
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