As previously reported, TSMC is expected to open its first processing chip production plant outside of Taiwan in Arizona around 2024. This also shows that Apple will be among the first customers of the factory that will produce processing chips using the N5 (5nm) process.
Through the Nikkei report, it is now also confirmed that NVIDIA will also be an initial customer of the factory, with the initial production output of the factory being around 20 thousand wafers per month. TSMC is seen wanting to increase the output to 40 thousand wafers per month by introducing 3nm chip manufacturing technology that will also produce 20 thousand wafers per month.
This photo taken on March 25, 2021 shows a factory of Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturer TSMC at Central Taiwan Science Park in Taichung. (Photo by Sam Yeh / AFP)
For now, Apple is seen to be the first customer of the factory, followed by NVIDIA which is expected to take advantage of the use of 5nm chips in the future. This matter, according to TSMC will allow these companies to reduce the cost of the import tariff of these components.
In the meantime, companies such as AMD and Xilinx are also seen wanting to buy production capacity from the Arizona factory, but for the time being there are still no further details that have been said about it.