TSMC 3nm Wafer Production To Reach 100,000 Units By End Of 2024, Increased iPhone Chip Orders, Qualcomm, MediaTek Accelerating This Growth

wccftech.com:

TSMC only had one customer for its 3nm ‘N3B’ process, which was Apple, but in 2024, a new report states that the semiconductor manufacturer is expected to witness a double-digit increase in revenue for this category as it aims to add more partners for its long-supported cutting-edge node. With this growth, the company’s 3nm wafer production is also said to reach 100,000 monthly units by the end of next year.

Alongside mass producing wafers to be used by various chipset makers, China Times reports that TSMC’s 3nm technology will also be used in other applications, ranging from NVIDIA GPUs to AI chips developed by giants like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and others. Currently, the report states that TSMC’s 3nm capacity is hitting between 60,000-70,000 wafers per month, but that figure is expected to witness a hefty jump by the end of 2024, reaching 100,000 monthly units.

With this manufacturing process expected to be supported for a long time, with different variations being used by TSMC’s partners, the 3nm process could account for 10 percent of the entire revenue for 2024, up from 5 percent this year. In fact, it is estimated that strong A17 Pro and M3 chip orders from Apple will generate $3.1 billion in revenue for the Taiwanese firm in 2023 alone.

With Qualcomm and MediaTek expected to gravitate to the N3E process next year for their flagship mobile SoCs, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 and Dimensity 9400, respectively, an even higher revenue boost should be expected. One of the reasons why Apple was only exclusively placing orders with TSMC for its 3nm ‘N3B’ node was the high wafer cost and low yields. With each wafer rumored to cost $20,000 and yields reportedly at 55 percent, only an entity as large as Apple can bear this