Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) will pour as much as $28 billion into capital spending this year, a staggering sum aimed at expanding its technological lead over the likes of moribund Intel and constructing a plant in Arizona to serve Apple and other key American customers.
Capital spending for 2021 is targeted at $25 billion to $28 billion, compared with $17.2 billion the previous year. About 80% of the outlay will be devoted to advanced processor technologies, suggesting TSMC anticipates a surge in business for cutting-edge chipmaking. Intel Corp., which on Wednesday announced a new CEO, is said to be contemplating a departure from tradition and outsourcing manufacture to the likes of TSMC.
The world’s largest contract chipmaker expects revenue of $12.7 billion to $13 billion this quarter, ahead of the $12.4 billion average of analyst estimates. That will power mid-teens sales growth this year…
The sheer scale of TSMC’s envisioned budget — more than half its projected revenue for the year — underscores TSMC’s determination to maintain its dominance and supply its biggest American clients from Apple Inc. to Qualcomm Inc. At 52% of projected 2021 revenue, the chipmaker’s planned spending would be the sixth-highest among all companies with a value of more than $10 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The outlay may also ramp up pressure on Intel, whose budget for 2020 was roughly $14.5 billion.
In their report, TSMC executives reiterated that construction on a planned $12 billion plant in Arizona will begin this year, without specifying how much of the planned capital spending for this year will be allocated to the massive project. TSMC’s Arizona chip fab will be completed by 2024, with initial target output of 20,000 wafers per month, though the company envisions having a “mega scale production site” over the long term, Chairman Mark Liu said.
In November, city officials in Phoenix, Arizona unanimously voted to authorize a development agreement with TSMC that would provide $205 million in city funds for infrastructure such as roads and water improvements for a $12 billion U.S. semiconductor fab backed by the Trump administration.
MacDailyNews Take: Feckless Intel deserves the emasculation it’s receiving. This is only the beginning.
When flawed, insecure, and therefore defective products are sold to consumers, recalls and/or recompense are the proper responses. — MacDailyNews, January 4, 2018
CERT: The only way to fix the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities is to replace the CPU. Intel et al. are going to try to sell us on a software bandaid instead of really fixing the problem properly. Watch and see. https://t.co/OeC2AoPdlK #Intel #AMD #ARM
— MacDailyNews (@MacDailyNews) January 4, 2018
“Feckless” ???
Intel has had many problems over the past few years. More than its share, and many of those problems are self inflicted. There is no justifiable rationale for Intel just bringing full production units on at 10 nm (and yes, Intel’s 10 nm is roughly equivalent to TSMC’s and Samsung’s 7 nm processes). To my knowledge Intel is not even sampling 7 nm parts (5 nm equivalent) to any major customers.
However, “feckless”? Not trusting my memory on the meaning of the word, which said feckless meant something not applicable here, I looked it up.
Feckless: lacking initiative or strength of character; irresponsible
Even given all its faults and stumbles, Intel has had several successful initiatives over the past few years so that definition does not apply. Not everything Intel does is CPU centric.
Talk to almost anyone at Intel and you’ll find a corporate strength of character that is well above average, so that definition does not apply.
As far as “irresponsible” goes… mistakes do not make you irresponsible. Just look at the most recent actions with regard to senior management. They are kicking to the curb people that made bad decisions. That’s about as far from irresponsible as it can get.
People (including me) on this site love to bash Intel for a broad range of perceived failings, yet those same people don’t want to take into account that Apple has repeatedly compounded the problem. Apple has repeatedly shipped newly introduced Macs with old Intel processors (Apple: Here’s a brand new Mac. It has this two year old Intel processor in it, but it’s our latest and greatest Mac.) with the Mac user base subsequently screaming that the Intel processors are not up to what they should be claiming it’s Intel’s fault.
Old news Intel apologist. The CEO is out and Apple’s M1 chip is progressive and eating their lunch.
Thanks to the backing of the Trump administration the smartest businessman president in the history of the USA!
You will be missed Don, but not the exploding Libtard heads around here that never gave him one word of credit for a remarkable 4-years of sound common sense policies. Thank you for your service sir and Melania the classiest caring first lady in history!…
Taiwan Can Help!
Samsung needs to remember that all this business could have been theirs if they hadn’t cheated on Apple.
TSMC was chosen by Apple as a reliable partner for future business and Apple invested heavily in TSMC because there was no other realistic alternative at the time.
Who could have imagined that TSMC is now referred to as the world’s leading chip fab company? I frequently wrote at the time that the danger to Samsung was not that they would lose business. The bigger danger would be that Apple would be investing in a company which would go on to be a rival to Samsung.