TSMC Lost $550 Million in Q1 thanks to Dodgy Materials
TSMC Lost $550 Million in Q1 thanks to Dodgy Materials
At this time TSMC’s 12/16nm wafers are thought to be affected by the defective materials, impacting wafers at Fab 14B. It is unknown whose products were affected by these defective wafer materials, though it is known that TSMC’s 12nm process is used to create Nvidia’s latest Turing series of graphics cards.Â
To ensure high levels of product quality, TSMC has had to scrap more wafers than expected, though the company states that the wafers that were scrapped in Q1 will be made up for in Q2. Thankfully, TSMC has found that demand in Q1 was higher than expected, adding an estimated $230 million in additional revenue in Q1. This partially makes up for TSMC’s $550 million loss.Â
TSMC has revised its Q1 2019 revenue estimates, lowering its revenue projections from $7.4 billion to $7.1 billion. The company’s gross margins are also set to drop by a few percentage points.Â
TSMC manufactures chips for most major companies, including AMD, Nvidia, Apple and Qualcomm. In the PC market, their new 7nm process node is set to be used to create AMD’s Ryzen 3000 series processors and their upcoming Navi series graphics cards.Â
Moving forward, TSMC has pledged to strengthen their inline wafer inspection tools and tighten their controls on incoming materials, which should help prevent similar issues occurring in the future.Â
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