TSMC Comments on Intel 3nm Order Rumors: Nothing Has Changed

It looks like yesterday's TrendForce report about Intel delaying orders for Meteor Lake's GPU tile at TSMC has attracted quite some attention from the two companies as both decided to comment on it. Both comments indicate that there are no changes to their plans. 

"TSMC does not comment on the business of individual customers," the company said in a statement published by Economic Daily. "The company's capacity expansion project is proceeding as planned." 

Meanwhile, Intel reiterated yesterday that its 14th Generation Core 'Meteor Lake' processors will be available in 2023, as planned. 

"In 2023, we will deliver our first disaggregated CPU built on Intel 4, Meteor Lake, which is showing good health in both our and our customers' labs," said Pat Gelsinger, Intel CEO, in the company's Q2 2022 earnings call last week. 

TrendForce yesterday issued a report claiming that Intel had decided to postpone the start of Meteor Lake's GPU tile production on TSMC's N3 node from late 2022 to 'late 2023,' which allegedly caused TSMC to revisit its N3 capacity investment plans.  

Because Meteor Lake is supposed to hit the market in fall 2023 (or even holiday season 2023), it hardly made a lot of sense for Intel to start high volume manufacturing (HVM) of MTL's GPU tile this year and have it delivered early in 2023. In fact, it was not genuinely beneficial from a financial accountability point of view. Therefore, moving the GPU tile HVM start to July 2023 is an entirely logical decision that should not affect the availability of Meteor Lake processors.  

As for TSMC, it has a bunch of customers planning to use N3, N3E, N3P and other N3 nodes in the 2023 to 2024 timeframe. The list includes not only Apple (TSMC's biggest client) and Intel in 2023 but also AMD, MediaTek, and Qualcomm, just to name a few, in 2024. Therefore, slowing down N3-capable capacity introduction did not make sense for TSMC, even if some of Intel's plans have changed.