The Red team surprised everyone last year with the launch of RDNA 2 based RX 6000 series GPUs that outperformed NVIDIA’s RTX 30-series GPUs for the first time, going head-to-head with NVIDIA. This in itself a huge achievement for team Red and having reviewed all the cards, I can tell you, these RDNA 2 GPUs are really powerful.
However, AMD’s main problem has had to tackle is with stocks; yes, these GPUs are found in very limited quantity. Thus, helping scalpers increase prices and the global chip crisis just worsens the situation even more, so, even though these RX 6000 series GPUs are great, finding them at the right prices might give you nightmares.
We expect Radeon 6000 Series GPU sales to grow significantly over the coming quarters as we ramp production.
We see good customer ordering patterns and a strong backlog. And then we have also seen that the supply chain has been tight overall for the semiconductor industry. And we’ve been working very closely with our supply chain partners. And so we also have good visibility to additional supply as we go throughout the year.
And whether you’re talking about consoles or you’re talking about PC gaming or you’re talking about the overall sort of gaming ecosystem, there’s significant demand. And so we believe there’s strong demand, and we’re continuing to ramp supply to meet that.
Having posted an amazing Q1 2021 revenue figure, AMD CEO Dr Lisa Su was keen to speak up on the current situation of the company’s GPU stocks. She stated that the current Radeon RX 6000 gaming graphics cards demand still exceeds supply and the same thing has been heard by NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang as well.
Yeah. So the consumer graphics or the gaming graphics business, as you talked about, has actually done well for us. It grew double digits this past quarter. We had a very deliberate strategy here with the launch of RDNA 2.
We started at the top of the stack with our Big Navi product. And then we’ve now introduced a couple of additional products. And you’ll see that both from the channel, sort of adding board cards into more OEM systems and notebook business as well as additional variants. So it’s an important market segment for us.
We’re happy with the progress. I think gamers really appreciate the product. It’s fair to say that the graphics demand is very high across the marketplace. So we’ve actually put quite a bit of product into the market, but the demand still exceeds supply.
Obviously, the demands have exceeded a lot, and AMD’s overall improvement in raw graphics performance is insane, and seeing the current situation, gamers have become more desperate than ever. AMD has acknowledged that graphics revenue for Q1 2021 increased with a double-digit percentage gain versus the previous year.
Though AMD promises to increase production, until and unless both AMD and NVIDIA meet the insane demand, prices won’t decrease as they will illicitly be sold at higher price points. It is still expected that GPU supply issues will persist till the end of 2021 and could finally end by next year.
Liverpool suffers £46 million pre-tax loss for the financial year ending May 2020. The figure suggests why the club’s owners were prepared to join the failed European Super League plan.
Liverpool revealed the financial impact of the coronavirus pandemic after pulling out of the controversial Super League following a furious public backlash last week.
Liverpool announced a profit of £42 million in March 2020. But after the outbreak of the Corona Virus, fans were restricted to the stadium. The loss of significant media revenue and match-day income at Anfield swung the situation. Though the commercial revenue rose by £29 million to £217 million, it cannot compensate the media revenue dropping by £59 million to £202 million, and matchday revenue was down £13 million to £71 million.
Liverpool managing director Andy Hughes said, “This financial reporting period was up to May 2020 so approaching a year ago now.”
“It does, however, begin to demonstrate the initial financial impact of the pandemic and the significant reductions in key revenue streams.”
“We were in a solid financial position prior to the pandemic and since this reporting period, we have continued to manage our costs effectively and navigate our way through such an unprecedented period.”
“We can now look ahead to the conclusion of this season and hopefully a more normal start to next season.”- he added.
Qualcomm launched Android’s toughest mobile chipset in December 2020 in the form of Snapdragon 888 SoC. It was launched as the successor of Snapdragon 865, but now, if reports are believed, Qualcomm is already testing the next version of 888 in the form of Snapdragon 888 Pro.
It was not even six months when Qualcomm launched their flagship chip, but they are already pondering to bring an even better version in the market, and this could power smartphones in the second half of 2021. Xiaomi, OnePlus, Vivo and Realme already used Snapdragon 888 SoC in their recent flagships smartphones.
The report floating online says that the first set of smartphones powered by this new Snapdragon 888 Pro mobile processors can be launched in the third quarter. At the start, Chinese manufacturers can be a part of it. The Snapdragon 888 SoC has a 35% faster performance compared to the Snapdragon 865 chipset. The latest chip is paired with Adreno 660 GPU and comes with 6th gen AI Engine.
The prime core, the Cortex-X1, is said to have a higher clock speed than that of the Snapdragon 888. The other cores might have the same speed. The GPU already has a high speed; thus, it will be difficult to think that it will have an upgrade.
Apart from this, it can also be heard that Snapdragon 700 series SoCs will not come into the market this year. Let’s see when the US-based Qualcomm offers this new mobile processor to the market and how it will disrupt the dominance boosted by Snapdragon 888 SoC.
Within the last few years, we have seen a huge amount of processors enter the market and their sole purpose is to accelerate artificial intelligence and machine learning workloads. These processors are often focused on a few key areas, due to the different types of machine learning algorithms possible, but the size limits them all.
Two years ago, a computer systems company, Cerebras, unveiled a revolution in silicon design: a processor as big as a human head, built on 16nm, using as much area on a 12-inch wafer as a rectangular design would allow, focused on both HPC workloads and AI as well. On 20th April, the company launched its second-generation product, built on TSMC 7nm, with more than double the cores and pretty much more than double of everything.
Second Generation Wafer Scale Engine
Cerebras builds the new processor on the first by moving to TSMC’s N7 process. This allows SRAMs to scale down to some extent, and the logic to scale down, and now the new chip has 850,000 AI cores on board. Basically, almost everything about the new chip is over 2 times.
Source: Anand Tech
The original processor is known as the Wafer Scale Engine (WSE-1), and the new one is named WSE-2. The WSE-2 features hundreds of thousands of AI cores across a massive 46225 mm2 of silicon. In that space, 2.6 trillion transistors for 850,000 cores have been enabled by Cerebras – by comparison, the second biggest AI CPU on the market is ~826 mm2, with 0.054 trillion transistors, according to Anand Tech. Cerebras also cites 1000x more onboard memory, with 40 GB of SRAM, compared to 40 MB on the Ampere A100.
2D Mesh with FMAC datapaths is connected with the cores. With WSE, Cerebras’ goal is to provide a single platform, “designed through innovative patents, that allows for bigger processors useful in AI calculations but has also been extended into a wider array of HPC workloads.”
Building on First Gen WSE
The custom graph compiler is a key to the design. The compiler takes pyTorch or TensorFlow and maps each layer to a physical part of the chip. This allows for asynchronous computation as the data flows through. Having such a large processor means the data can continually be moved onto the next stage of the calculation as it never has to go off-die and wait in memory, wasting power. Sparsity has been kept in mind while designing the compiler and processor, allowing high utilization regardless of batch size, or can enable parameter search algorithms to run simultaneously.
WSE-1 is sold as a complete system called CS-1, and several dozen customers with deployed systems up and running are present, including a number of pharmaceutical companies, research laboratories, military, biotechnology research, and the oil and gas industries. “Lawrence Livermore has a CS-1 paired to its 23 PFLOP ‘Lassen’ Supercomputer. Pittsburgh Supercomputer Center purchased two systems with a $5m grant, and these systems are attached to their Neocortex supercomputer, allowing for simultaneous AI and enhanced compute.”
The uniqueness of Cerebras’ design is being able to go beyond the reticle limit, the physical manufacturing limits normally presented in manufacturing. As connecting two areas with a cross-reticle connection is difficult, processors are designed with this reticle limit as the maximum size of a chip.
Cerebras remains the only one offering a processor on this scale – “the same patents that Cerebras developed and were awarded to build these large chips are still in play here, and the second-gen WSE will be built into CS-2 systems with a similar design to CS-1 in terms of connectivity and visuals.”
Cerebras states that having the solution to such a large single-chip means that the barrier to distributed training methods across 100s of AI chips is now so much further away, that this excess complication is not needed in most scenarios – to that, we’re seeing CS-1 deployments of single systems attached to supercomputers. However, the company is keen to point out that “two CS-2 systems will deliver 1.7 million AI cores in a standard 42U rack, or three systems for 2.55 million in a larger 46U rack (assuming there’s sufficient power for all at once!), replacing a dozen racks of alternative computer hardware.”
At Hot Chips 2020, Sean Lie, Chief Hardware Architect of Cerebras, stated that one of the key benefits to customers of the company was the ability to enable workload simplification that previously required racks of GPU/TPU but instead can run on a single WSE in a computationally relevant fashion.
As a company, Cerebras has ~300 staff across different countries including Canada, the USA, and Japan. They have dozens of customers already with CS-1 deployed and a number more already trialing CS-2 remotely as they bring up the commercial systems.
The much-anticipated promo of FIFA 21, Team Of The Season (TOTS), has been now live from Friday, 23rd April. So as we start the promo, FIFA 21 had released the first TOTS team, i.e., FIFA 21 Community Team Of The Season.
The whole FIFA 21 football community was given a chance to vote from a shortlist of those who’ve earned no more than 1 Special Item in the FIFA 21 Ultimate Team. The voting was done to choose the most consistent 11 players from the past year.
FIFA 21 Community Team Of The Season:
GK: Alphonse Areola (Fulham) – 89
RB: Aaron Wan-Bissaka (Manchester United) – 92
RB: Nordi Mukiele (RB Leipzig) – 90
CB: Connor Goldson (Rangers) – 87
CB: David Alaba (Bayern Munich) – 92
LB: Nicolas Tagliafico (Ajax) – 90
CM: Federico Valverde (Real Madrid) – 92
CAM: Christopher Nkunku (RB Leipzig) – 89
CAM: Tanguy Ndombele (Tottenham Hotspur) – 90
CAM: Piotr Zielinski (Napoli) – 89
LW: Harvey Barnes (Leicester City) – 92
ST: Moise Kean (Paris Saint-Germain) – 87
ST: Odsonne Edouard (Celtic) – 88
ST: Josip Ilicic (Atalanta) – 91
RW: Leon Bailey (Bayer Leverkusen) 90
FIFA 21 has now introduced the Community TOTS Guaranteed. It requires:
Team Of The Season Players: Min 1
Team Overall Rating: Min 85
Team Chemistry: Min 70
Number of players in the Squad: 11
Start date: 28th April, 10:30 pm IST Expiry date: 30th April, 10:30 pm IST Expected SBC price: 100k-120k FIFA coins
Community TOTS Guaranteed SBC solution
The top players which you can get from this SBC is Valverde, Barnes, Alaba, Wan-Bissaka which would make your spending on this SBC worth it. Although there are some players whose price is around 50k FIFA coins, so getting those cards would be bad definitely but you can’t rule out the chance of getting one of the top players from the FIFA 21 Community Team Of The Season.
I have got 92 LW Barnes from Leicester City from the Community TOTS Guaranteed SBC. This was an absolute win as the card is priced at around 500k FIFA coins.
So go out and try your luck as this game is all about fun. If you get a good card, it’s great or else you can put the card into other upcoming SBCs.
Every year only a few selected companies make them into TIME100 Most Influential Companies list as this is one of the most prestigious lists to get into.
TIME solicited nominations across various sectors, including healthcare, entertainment, transportation, technology, and evaluated each one on key factors, including relevance, impact, innovation, leadership, ambition and success.
Only two Indian firms, Reliance’s Jio Platforms and e-learning startup Byju’s have made it into Time Magazine’s list of 100 most influential firms worldwide.
Interestingly, Jio Platforms was listed under the Innovators category alongside Zoom, Adidas, TikTok, Ikea, Moderna and Netflix. Jio has already become India’s largest 4G network and drastically reducing data rates in the country, costing less than 5 cents a month for 1 GB.
Jio has already raised billions of dollars to make more innovations like work with Facebook, develop a WhatsApp-based e-commerce platform or partner with Google to roll out a low-cost 5G smartphone market with JioFiber and diversify the Indian entertainment portfolio that has gone digital off-late.
Another Indian firm that is actually surpassed all expectations to make it into the TIME100 Most Influential Companies has to be Byju’s. It was listed alongside Tesla, Huawei, Shopify, Airbnb and DiDi Chuxing in the Disruptors category.
“Byju Raveendran, the founder of Indian e-learning startup BYJU’S, knows how to press an advantage. As users of his company’s signature app nearly doubled to 80 million during the COVID-19 pandemic, he went on a spending spree, fuelled by funding from investors like Tencent and BlackRock,” Time said.
Obviously, BYJU’S now wants to create a global footprint with acquisitions of WhiteHat Jr and Osmo, particularly targeting the US e-learning market. Also, it wants to bring the same one-on-one lessons it introduced in India to other countries like the US, the UK, Indonesia, Mexico and Brazil.
Manchester City travelled to Paris to face the mighty Paris Saint-Germain. PSG lined up an exciting front three of Neymar, Mbappe and Di Maria. The trio could take apart any defence on its own.
PSG started the game brilliantly and took the lead from a headed goal by their captain Marquinhos. They dominated the first half. But thanks to Guardiola’s half-time talk, Manchester City came out as a different team after the break.
City started high up the pitch and pressed well to take the pressure to the opponent’s camp. City captain Kevin De Bruyne was successful in finding the net. He crossed the ball, but nobody came close to it, and it eventually ended up in the net. It was one of the luckiest goals of De Bruyne.
A few minutes later, Mahrez stood up to take a freekick. He wanted to hit it around the wall but couldn’t, and the ball just went through the wall and into the net.
Mahrez told City’s website when asked about the free-kick goal post-game: “I wanted to go around the wall to be honest and I missed it, it went between the two players and fortunately it was in.”
“I was so happy, I knew we could win here and to score to make it 2-1 for the team was amazing.”
It was enough for Manchester City to win the game, and PSG could only blame themselves as a reckless challenge from Gueye saw them reduced to 10 men and Mbappe was also ineffective in the second half. Pochettino is unhappy with his team’s performance in the second half and would be raring to go out on all attack in the second leg.
Soccer Football – Champions League – Semi Final First Leg – Paris St Germain v Manchester City – Parc des Princes, Paris, France – April 28, 2021 Paris St Germain’s Kylian Mbappe in action as Manchester City’s Kyle Walker looks on REUTERS/Benoit Tessier
Pochettino said after the game: “There were two different halves, we did well in the first half but it is difficult to eliminate a team like City. We deserved to be ahead but they were better than us and dominated the second half. The two goals were accidents, but they created more than us. It was one half for each team.”
“The two goals are very disappointing. It is difficult to accept but that can happen, and it has happened in a semi-final. It is very painful.”
“It is difficult to explain why they were better but we were better in the first half. It was difficult to cope, their physical condition, they were more aggressive. We didn’t show the energy you need. The red card could be yellow, could be red, it was an action.”
“The second leg, in football you need to believe. They have the advantage.”
Manchester City captain De Bruyne told BT Sport when asked what Pep told the players at half time: “Just play a little bit more with the ball. The first half, we were a bit too rushed, trying to go forward too quickly and that’s not the way we are set up as a team.”
“In the second half we tried to find space more patiently. They’re a tough team to play against. The progression we made as a team was good.”
De Bruyne added on his goal: “It set up in a perfect position. It’s so difficult for the goalkeeper because he expects someone to touch it.”
“We kept going and with the second goal Riyad is good for us. He asked me if he could take it and I said: ‘Yes, if you believe in yourself’. He scored. Who am I to say something?”
“There is still a game to go and we have to concentrate on that.”
Pep Guardiola said post-game: “It looks easy but it’s not easy. I played when I was young and it’s not easy. PSG scored four goals in Camp Nou and three goals against Bayern Munich. They have the quality to do it. You play cautious sometimes, but in a good sense.”
“I was not complaining. I said at half-time, I understand why they were like this but try to play our game. Go out there and try to do it. They were fantastic. I admire them going from not playing good to playing well, it means a lot.”
“Normally when you are not good, you lose 3-0 and it’s over. When you play knock-out stages, semi-final first leg, the players are thinking about not losing. You can’t win qualification in first leg – but you can lose it. So, I understand the players. Sometimes you feel not comfortable.”
“But we spoke at half time and adjusted a few little stupid things, not important things. [The turnaround] depended on the players.”
He further added: “They are so incredibly dangerous with [Kylian] Mbappe in behind. But we found the goals and could have scored more. Just half of the job is done. If we play shy and not who we are, anything can happen and PSG can turn it on. But if we play who we are, maybe we have the chance to reach the final.”
“I was happy in the locker room after the players were calm. Not cheering – just calm. Anything can happen in the second leg. Now we go to Crystal Palace to make important step in the Premier League.”
With days, the way of watching has changes, web series have increasingly become in India and one its pioneer has to TVF or The Viral Fever. Their unique web series potray different aspects of life and we can genuinely relate them to our common lives.
They have made great web series like Kota Factory, Gullak, Cubicles, Pitchers and a lot more. Well, their recent “Aspirants” web series does show the struggle behind clearing UPSC exams and the story of 3 friends – Abhilash, SK, and Guri.
Obviously, this was an attempt to capture the struggle and the drama behind the making of UPSC CSE aspirants in Old Rajinder Nagar of Delhi. This is the story of three UPSC aspirants journey and the story has made fans go crazy and the recent episode 4 of Aspirants has grossed over 5 million views in less than a day.
Fans have taken Twitter as their medium to show love for the web series and here are some best tweets with #Aspirants which you should definitely check out:
Transferring players with a huge transfer fee are very common in recent times. But what about the transfer of managers?
There are many managers whose demand is very high among the multiple clubs. To get the service of that manager, clubs need to buy out their contracts as well.
Here are the top 5 manager transfer fees in the football history:
5. José Mourinho to Real Madrid [€8m, 2010]
Jose Mourinho joined Real Madrid leaving Inter Milan in 2010. After winning the treble, it was a surprise decision from his side. As per the reports, the Spanish giant paid €8m as a transfer fee.
4. Rúben Amorim to Sporting CP [€10m, 2020]
FUTEBOL ¿ Ruben Amorim, treinador do Sporting durante o jogo Sporting CP – FC Famalicao relativo a 26 jornada da 1 Liga realizado no Estadio Jose Alvalade em Lisboa. Domingo, 11 de Abril de 2021. ASF/SERGIO MIGUEL SANTOS SPORTING – FAMALICAO
Rúben Amorim took charge of Sporting CP leaving Braga in 2020. Sporting CP paid €10m to Braga for the service of Rúben Amorim. Sporting CP won Taça da Liga in the 2020-21 season under him.
3. Brendan Rodgers to Leicester City [€10.5m, 2019]
Brendan Rodgers’ move to Leicester City in 2019 from Celtic was a controversial decision from his side. However, the Premier League side had paid €10.5m to Celtic for him. Leicester City is one of the toughest competitors in the Premier League since his joining. They are in the top 4 race in the Premier League this season as well.
2. André Villas-Boas to Chelsea [€15m, 2011]
Chelsea paid an astonishing €15m to Porto for André Villas-Boas in 2011. However, his stint was not a fruitful one. He managed Chelsea in just 40 matches. But after the poor performance in his short period, he was sacked.
1. Julian Nagelsmann to FC Bayern Munich [€25m, 2021]
As per the report by the BILD, Julian Nagelsmann is set to take charge of FC Bayern Munich from the start of next season for €25m which will be the highest in the history. The RB Leipzig boss is one of the prime targets for many clubs including Manchester United, FC Bayern Munich. But as per the reports, FC Bayern Munich will be his next destination.
For Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), being the world’s largest foundry with nearly 500 customers has its peculiarities. On the one hand, the chipmaker can cater to almost any client with almost any requirements. On the other hand, it has to stay ahead of everyone else both in terms of technology and in terms of capacity.
As far as capacity is concerned, TSMC is in no range to be challenged by any competitor for years. As for fabrication technologies, the Taiwanese chipmaker has recently reiterated that it’s confident that its 2nm, 3nm, and 4nm processes will be available on time and will be more advanced than competing nodes.
Confidence
Earlier this year, TSMC significantly boosted its Capital Expenditure budget of 2021 to a $25 – $28 billion range, and further increased it to around $30 billion as a part of its three-year plan to spend $100 billion on manufacturing capacities and research and development.
Keeping the global chip shortage in mind, about 80% of TSMC’s $30 billion capital budget this year will be spent on expanding capacities for advanced technologies, such as 3nm, 4nm/5nm, and 6nm/7nm. Analysts from China Renaissance Securities believe that by the end of the year, most of the money on advanced nodes will be used to expand the company’s 5nm capacity to 110,000 ~ 120,000 wafer starts per month (WSPM). Meanwhile, TSMC stated that 10% of its capital expenditure will be allocated for mask making and advanced packaging, whereas another 10% will be spent on specialty technologies (which includes tailored versions of mature nodes).
TMSC’s most recent capital expenditure hike to $30 billion was made after Intel announced its IDM 2.0 strategy (that involves in-house production, outsourcing, and foundry operations) and to a large degree gives an assurance about TMSC’s confidence in both short-term and long-term future even ahead of intensified competition.
“As a leading pure-play foundry, TSMC has never been short on competition in our 30-plus-year history, yet we know how to compete,” said C.C. Wei, president, and CEO of TSMC, at a recent conference call with analysts and investors, according to Anand Tech. “We will continue to focus on delivering technology leadership, manufacturing excellence, and earning our customers’ trust. The last point, customers’ trust, is fairly important because we do not have internal products that compete with customer.”
SOURCE: Anand Tech
5nm Gaining Customers
In mid-2020, TSMC was the first company to start high volume manufacturing (HVM) of chips using its 5nm process technology.
Initially, the node was used solely for the company’s top customers — Apple and HiSilicon. HiSilicon’s shipments stopped on September 14, which left all of the leading-edge capacity to Apple. By now, more customers are ready with their 5nm designs, so the adoption of this node is growing. Meanwhile, TSMC says, compared to its expectations just several months ago, more customers are planning to use the 5nm family of technologies (including N5, N5P, and N4).
“N5 is already in its second year of volume production with yield better than our original plan,” said Mr. Wei. N5 demand continues to be strong, driven by smartphone and HPC applications, and we expect N5 to contribute around 20% of our wafer revenue in 2021. […] In fact, we are seeing stronger engagement with more customers on 5 nm and 3 nm [versus 7 nm at similar stages]. The engagement is so strong that we have to really prepare the capacity for it.”
Analysts from China Renaissance estimate that TSMC’s 5nm features a transistor density of around 170 million transistors per square millimeter (MTr/mm2), which if accurate, makes it the densest technology available today. By contrast, “Samsung’s Foundry’s 5LPE can boast with about 125 MTr/mm2 ~130 MTr/mm2, whereas Intel’s 10 nm features an approximately 100 MTr/mm2 density.”
In the coming weeks, TSMC is set to start making chips using a performance-enhanced version of its 5nm technology that will increase frequencies by up to 5% or reduce power consumption by up to 10% (at the same complexity). This tech is called the N5P
4nm: On Track for Next Year
TSMC’s N5 family of technologies also includes the evolutionary 4nm process that will enter risk production later this year and will be used for mass production in 2022.
This technology will keep the same design infrastructure, IPs, SPICE simulation programs, and is set to provide further PPA (power, performance, area) advantages over N5. Meanwhile, since 4nm further extends the usage of EUV lithography tools, it also reduces mask counts, process steps, risks, and costs.
“N4 will leverage the strong foundation of N5 to further extend our 5 nm family,” said Mr. Wei. “N4 is a straightforward migration from N5 with compatible design rules while providing further performance, power, and density enhancement for the next wave of 5-nanometer products. N4 risk production is targeted for the second half this year and volume production in 2022.”
3nm: Due in H2 2022
In 2022, TSMC will launch its brand-new 3nm manufacturing process, which will keep using FinFET transistors but is expected to offer the whole package of PPA improvements.
TSMC’s 3nm promises to reduce power consumption by 25% – 30% (at the same performance and complexity) or increase performance by 10% – 15% (at the same power and complexity), compared to the 5nm process. All the while the new node will also improve transistor density by 1.1 to 1.7 times depending on the structures (1.1X for analog, 1.2X for SRAM, 1.7X for logic).
3nm will further increase the number of EUV layers but will keep using DUV lithography. Also, since the technology keeps using FinFET, it will not require a new generation of EDA (electronic design automation) tools redesigned from scratch and development of all-new IPs, which might become a competitive advantage over Samsung Foundry’s Gate-All-Around FETs (GAAFETs)/MBCFET-based 3GAE.
“N3 will be another full node stride from our N5 and will use FinFET transistor structure to deliver the best technology maturity, performance, and cost for our customers,” said Mr. Wei. “Our N3 technology development is on track with good progress. We continue to see a much higher level of customer engagement for both HPC and smartphone applications at N3 as compared with N5 and N7.”
In fact, TSMC’s claims about growing customer engagement with 3nm indirectly telegraph its high expectations for the 3nm process.
“[N3] risk production is scheduled in 2021,” said TSMC’s CEO. “The volume production is targeted in the second half of 2022. Our N3 technology will be the most advanced foundry technology in both PPA and transistor technology when it is introduced. […] We are confident that both our [N5] and [N3] will be large and long-lasting nodes for TSMC.”
Beyond 3nm
GAAFETs are still a part of TSMC’s development roadmap. The largest contract chipmaker is expected to use a new kind of transistors with its ‘post-3nm’ technology (presumably N2). In fact, TSMC is in a path-finding mode for the next generations of materials and transistor structures.
“For advanced CMOS logic, TSMC’s 3nm and 2nm CMOS nodes are progressing nicely through the pipeline,” the company said in its annual report recently. “In addition, TSMC’s reinforced exploratory R&D work is focused on beyond-2nm node and on areas such as 3D transistors, new memory, and low-R interconnect, which are on track to establish a solid foundation to feed into many technology platforms.”
It is noteworthy that TSMC is expanding capacity for R&D operations at Fab 12, where advanced nodes including the 3nm and 2nm are currently being researched and developed.
Summary
Overall, TSMC is confident that its “everyone’s foundry” strategy will enable it to grow further in terms of sales, market share, and scale. The company also expects to maintain its technology leadership going forward, which is pivotal for growth.
“For the full year of 2021, we now forecast […] foundry industry growth [at] about 16%,” said Wendell Huang, CFO of TSMC, at a recent conference call with analysts and investors. “For TSMC, we are confident we can outperform the foundry revenue growth and grow by around 20% in 2021.”
The company has a strong technology roadmap and it is set to continue introducing improved leading-edge nodes every year, thus offering its customers improvements at a predictable cadence.
