TSMC's 3nm Process Dominates, but Prices Rise Due to Supply and Demand

According to TapTechNews on June 13, the Taiwan China Times stated that due to the poor yield rate of Samsung's 3nm GAA, TSMC's 3nm FinFET process currently has an absolute dominant position in the industry. However, due to the short supply of production capacity, upstream IC design companies have begun to spread the news of price increases.

The world's seven major technology giants (NVIDIA, AMD, Intel, Qualcomm, MediaTek, Apple, and Google) will successively introduce TSMC's 3nm process. For example, Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen4, MediaTek Dimensity 9400, and Apple A18 and M4 series will all be built with the 3N3 family. Among them, Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen4 based on N3E technology has taken the lead in increasing prices, with a 25% surge in quotation compared to the previous generation, and is expected to exceed $250 (TapTechNews note: currently about 1815 yuan).

However, the industry also points out that this increase is still within a reasonable range. Mainly, the wafer cost of 3nm itself has increased by about 25% compared to 5nm, and this increase has not taken into account factors such as the overall number of wafers and the design architecture.

TSMC President Wei Zhejia also emphasized that TSMC's process is very power-saving, and the yield rate is relatively good. If looking at each die, TSMC is the cheapest, and promised to progress quarterly and improve year by year, always providing the most leading technology to customers.