AMD is expected to become TSMC’s second largest customer

That AMD has the majority of its circuit manufacturing at Taiwanese TSMC on the node 7 nanometers is nothing new. Here, the cores of the company’s processors since the architecture Zen 2 and graphics circuits since Radeon VII are produced, while the Ryzen processors’ I / O circuits continue to have Globalfoundries and its manufacturing process of 12 nanometers as the sender.

TSMC’s by far largest customer is Apple, which occupies about a quarter of the capacity measured in sales. For a long time, Huawei was the second largest through its subsidiary Hisilicon, with 15 and 12.8 percent of TSMC’s sales in 2019 and three quarters of 2020, respectively. Other notable customers are Qualcomm, Nvidia, Broadcom, Mediatek and Intel – companies that are now shrinking in TSMC’s order books against AMD.

Share of total TSMC sales per customer

Data source: Seeking Alpha

Tom’s Hardware reports on how AMD’s increasing order intake coincides with Hisilicon’s fate and in 2021 makes the company TSMC’s second largest customer. In addition to Huawei’s dropout, companies such as Qualcomm and Nvidia have increased the number of orders with TSMC competitor Samsung – which means that AMD and system processor developer Mediatek are taking big steps up in the Taiwanese order books.

Intel has also gradually increased production at TSMC since 2019 and is expected to continue to contribute to the coffers with the production of Xe graphics cards in 2021 on the N6P manufacturing technology. Regarding TSMC’s most modern technologies, N5 and upcoming N3, Apple is by far the largest – which is reflected in the share of order value.

The fact that AMD will be TSMC’s second largest customer in 2021, on the other hand, means more than just increased status on paper. In addition to the opportunity to negotiate better financial terms, the company is also expected to be able to influence TSMC’s future direction regarding the development of circuits. The motto “the biggest goes first” is possibly the most important in terms of gender to the latest process nodes – where AMD in the future can see itself as a priority customer for the first time.

The first 5 nanometer AMD products are expected to be the company’s Zen 4 processors. These are expected in 2022. Whether AMD’s newfound status as a top customer at TSMC can mean an accelerated transition to 3 nanometers remains to be seen.