DigiTimes is reporting that the lead time for TSMC’s 7 nm production has grown substantially. Two months used to be the norm, but now it’s ballooned to six months due to strong demand from the smartphone industry. TSMC has increased its budget for expanding production capacity in response.
Some enthusiasts believe this could impact the availability of Ryzen CPUs. As TechPowerUp points out: “AMD has its entire modern product stack built under the 7 nm process, so this could potentially affect both CPUs and GPUs from the company – and let’s not forget AMD’s Zen 3 and next-gen RDNA GPUs which are all being designed for the 7 nm+ process node.”
GaAs foundry Win Semiconductors also plans to expand production capacity in the second quarter of 2020 to meet ever-increasing compound semiconductor foundry demand for 5G applications. For backend service firm ASE Technology Holding, it is ready to provide FO-AiP and FO-SiP packaging services to meet demand from the 5G sector.