
TSMC Boosts CapEx by $1B, Expects N5 Node to Be Major Success - tosh
https://www.anandtech.com/show/15420/tsmc-boosts-capex-by-1-billion-expects-5n-node-to-be-major-success
======
mdorazio
This is even more good news for AMD as well since it points to a clear path to
5nm in its chips well ahead of anything Intel has demonstrated.

~~~
jagger27
This really good for AMD because they are soaking up a bunch of Apple’s old
7nm capacity for a bunch of upcoming products (Xbox, PS5 being the major
ones). Apple seems to be going all in on 5nm. Plus, I bet the next Epyc will
be on 5nm too.

[https://www.macrumors.com/2020/01/02/tsmc-a14-iphone-chip-
pr...](https://www.macrumors.com/2020/01/02/tsmc-a14-iphone-chip-production-
second-quarter/)

~~~
ksec
1\. Qualcomm, Broadcom, Nvidia, and nearly 70 others have 7nm designs waiting
in queue. It is not like all the 7nm Capacity immediately goes to AMD.

2\. Next Epyc ( Zen 3 ) is 7nm+, not 5nm Yet. That would be Zen 4.

3\. From the latest AMD quarterly results it was clear it wasn't capacity that
were holding them back. They have just been far too conservative with their
forecasting.

------
rossmohax
I find it strange, that in this strictly B2B market, where target audience is
just dozen hundreds/thousands chip design engineers, they still use BS
marketing. There is no physical dimension of 5nm anywhere, neither there were
for "7nm" or "10nm" processes.

~~~
ksec
>I find it strange, that in this strictly B2B market...

Except it is not, It is very much consumer marketing. Look at how _all_ their
Chip Vendors proudly market themselves as 7nm, or first to EUV.

Samsung Foundry started this whole thing, and TSMC CEO said during an investor
conference their customers were asking for smaller nm because "another"
foundry were using those numbers.

At the end of the day, all we have to know is that each full node has roughly
2x density improvement over previous node. And we still have 5nm, 3nm, 2nm,
1.4nm and 1nm coming up. Someday Moore's Law will indeed be dead, but for now
at least we have another 5 - 6 years to go. I am happy I will get even more
powerful GPU down the line.

~~~
akiselev
_Samsung Foundry started this whole thing, and TSMC CEO said during an
investor conference their customers were asking for smaller nm because
"another" foundry were using those numbers._

That's not consumer marketing. That's still B2B, except the audience is
management instead of engineering as assumed in the GP. TSMC's customers are
not consumers. Set up costs run into the millions of dollars.

After the whole gigahertz wars, there aren't many consumers that are savvy
enough to know that you want _fewer_ nanometers.

edit: quote for clarity

~~~
ksec
>That's not consumer marketing. That's still B2B........

Apple announced they were first to ship 7nm Chip in iPhone during an Apple
event watched live by more than 50 millions people.

Huawei Announced their Soc being the first shipping EUV chip, most advanced
SoC ....

Qualcomm announced their 5G Modem on latest 7nm to give industry leading
performance......

None of these are B2B, they are directed to consumer, and these Vendors pushed
TSMC for those numbers. TSMC delivered.

~~~
redisman
Nvidia and AMD are also hyping 7nm process to the enthusiast market where
it'll propagate onwards.

------
astrodust
The cut-over into sub-micron process was a real trip, but sub-nanometer is
going to be wild.

