TSMC A9 Contracts Surge: Report

Equipment suppliers say Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) has received a surge in Apple contracts for the A9 processors, the brain of the iPad and iPhone mobile devices.

To fill the orders, the world's No.1 pure contract-chip supplier is accelerating a plan to boost foundry capacity using 16-nanometer FinFET process at its factories to an estimated 97,000 silicon wafers a month some time next year from current 50,000 wafers a month.

The suppliers say that the contracts are so considerable that TSMC has sent executives to push the deliveries of the equipment it has purchased at the headquarters of these international equipment suppliers.

Based on the pace the new equipment purchases, TSMC's equipment suppliers feel that TSMC has not only won Apple's A9 contracts but also its A10 contracts

The suppliers estimate that TSMC has won over 30% of Apple's A9 outsourcing contracts, in contrast to South Korean news media reporting that TSMC would receive only around 20% whereas Samsung Electronics would bag the rest.

Some industry executives even thought that Samsung would win all of the A9 contracts, while Apple would farm out the production of its next generation processor for iPad, the A9X, to TSMC.

However, TSMC has refused to comment on the reports.

Earlier, TSMC conceded that its 16nm FinFET process would fall behind Samsung's 14nm FinFET process in terms of market share due chiefly to Samsung's underselling strategy and energy-efficient DDR4 8Gb DRAM dedicated to A9.

But based on TSMC's vigorous efforts to boost 16nm FinFET process capacity, the equipment suppliers feel Samsung's 14nm FinFET process is not going as smoothly as expected in terms of defect-free rate.

(KL)