Perhaps the worst possible news for the semiconductor market has been confirmed. And it is that a giant like TSMC, with 60% of the world market in terms of semiconductors and foundry strictly speaking, announced that if a partner wants to get one of its wafers, it will have to pay a extra cost.
TSMC breaks the bank: 12-inch wafer prices on the rise
As you probably know, 12 inch wafers are the most used in the semiconductor industry to create high performance or high volume chips. But what if TSMC decides to increase the prices? Well we have a new crisis in the industry and to top it off there is hardly any competition and it is possible that they will follow in their footsteps.
TSMC’s aumento de precio corresponds to a valor of 400 dólares, lo que supone un nuevo golpe a los usuarios, pero esto no es lo peor, ya que este valor es temporal y tendrá que ser revisado seguramente al alza cada quarter por parte de the company. Therefore, we will face a price crisis in the main stores of our country and surely in the rest of the world.
This affects AMD, Apple and NVIDIA (to a lesser extent the latter), since their GPUs, SoCs and CPUs will see their price increase, but by how much?
The most expensive wafers double the percentage increase
The truth is, if we look at the data provided by IC Insgiths, the average cost of platelets produced by TSMC in 2020 was $ 1,634 per unit, which was a price increase of 2.39% over the last year. This data is for 8 inch slices, so what about 12 inch slices?
The price of these has risen to $ 9,213, which is almost a 5% difference, which we will logically see in Ryzen 5000 processors and RX 6000 GPUs. The real problem is that the estimate is yesterday. , but it does mean that if prices continue to rise and climb, when the quarterly price adjustment arrives the rise could be stronger moment to moment in components as well as in next-gen consoles.
TSMC for its part neither confirms nor denies, because before the reports that were presented the company slipped an elegant:
We are committed to providing customer value and will not comment on pad pricing issues.
Analysts predict that the company’s move will drag Samsung and Intel to the same point, as they do not expect to incur losses due to the increase in commodity prices. We will see in a few days how much the increase will be and how it will be applied.
