The latest news made us a bit optimistic that the crisis in the semiconductor sector could see its end at some point this year. It is not that we are going to contradict these statements, but as a result of new information we have a better overview of what is happening and we can have a broader view of certain data. And it is that TSMC would have customer queues even for the oldest processes, is this really going to end in 2022?
There are no chips, it’s a no-brainer, it’s a fact. Every industry, whatever it may be, is compromised and the biggest and least graceful movement for the user who demands products is in the process of being carried out. And it is that according to the latest information, manufacturers give up the production of cutting-edge or simply advanced nodes and designs and have to take a step back.
TSMC has client queue – for old nodes!
In 2022, what we could not even think of in 2020 has occurred: queues of customers competing for a tiny piece of the cake with the big ones to get chips. That could make sense if we see that Apple, AMD and NVIDIA have taken over, together with Qualcomm (and in part Mediatek), the quota that TSMC is capable of launching daily, monthly and almost annually.
That is, there are no chips at 5nm, 7nm and there are no longer any at 14nm at TSMC. All production is reserved and now we must not look down, towards their reduction, but rather look up. Manufacturers are no longer looking for efficiency, performance and cost per wafer, it seems that it does not matter given the current market situation where there are none, so the measures are extreme.
The 28nm on stage, we go back to 2011
None of the named nodes has capacity in 2022 and until the new batch FABs are finished there is not much to do and logically no manufacturer is going to withdraw from said quota assigned by TSMC, Intel or Samsung.
The problem is such that neither the node of 28nm of the Taiwanese can meet the demand, where many manufacturers have changed their designs to try to reach the effective share of internal productivity that their customers mark. GlobalFoundries is being an option today curiously, since the three chipmakers are above 100% of current capacity forcing the machinery and working at full speed waiting for the new ASML scanners.
What is the scenario that we are going to see shortly given the customer queues at TSMC? Well, firstly, a change in the specifications of many consumer products that are not high performance and secondly, an offer that may not stabilize for another 6 months (optimistically). The most likely, being cautious, is that the balance between supply and demand will be reached at some point in the third quarter of the year, although there is also the uncertainty of the hit of the new variant in China and Taiwan, which is already making a dent in company closures , without forgetting the energy cuts that are suffering in both countries.
