While production has been slowing down for a lot of companies during the current COVID-19 crisis, it looks like AMD and Nvidia are set to use this time to their advantage. A report published by Digitimes mentioned that TSMC is expected to have a strong first half of 2020, partly due to the ramp-up in order by AMD and Nvidia.
Digitimes says “A ramp-up in short lead-time orders placed by AMD and Nvidia will allow TSMC to post relatively strong results compared to other foundries in the first half of 2020, according to industry sources.”
A High Demand In 2020
There has always been a worry if TSMC has the capacity to keep up with demand. We know that Apple currently makes use of TSMC to produce its output of A-series processors but with their apparent plans to move to a 5nm process in the latter half of 2020, this frees up space for other companies to jump in.
AMD and Nvidia are expected to make use of this to aid with the development of their next-generation CPUs and GPUs. Although Qualcomm and HiSilicon are currently larger customers than AMD, it looks like AMD is set to overtake these by the end of the year.
An AMD order of 30,000 wafers accounted for 21% of the total TSMC capacity at the time has definitely helped with this. AMD will be delighted there is more capacity – especially as TSMC has been fully booked since the start of the year.
Are AMD And Nvidia Gearing Up For Next-Generation GPU Releases?
Nvidia has also taken up a fair chunk of TSMC’s capacity in what looks like them gearing up for its Ampere series of GPUs. Whether or not these will come before or after AMD’s ‘Big Navi’ still remains to be seen.
We still don’t have any official word on when we may see these next-generation GPUs, especially with the cancellation of a lot of events. There is some hope we may hear an announcement during Computex in September 2020 – that’s if it even happens at all.
It seems like AMD and Nvidia may simply be making sure that they have a good backlog of supplies in order to cope with the demand when their graphics cards actually drop. This is good news for those who are worried about shortages during the current situation.