Looking back at TSMC's shareholders meeting last year, founder Morris Chang said in an emotional tone: "I love TSMC, and I will create miracles again," which won warm applause from the shareholders present, and also announced the arrival of the post-Mr. Chang era. Over the past year, despite the US-China trade war, as well as incidents such as machine viruses and photoresist, TSMC, under the leadership of co-CEOs Liu Deyin and Wei Zhejia, has still demonstrated strong competitive strength, especially in advanced processes such as 7 nanometers, gradually widening the gap with its competitors; and the stock price hit a new high of 281 yuan, and the total market value also reached 7.28 trillion Taiwan dollars, writing a new page in the market value of the Taiwan stock market. And TSMC is now firing on all cylinders.
The reason why TSMC's stock price is so strong this time is mainly attributed to the fact that most foreign legal persons are optimistic that TSMC's 7-nanometer process will become the main source of growth for its main operations and profits from the second half of next year. In addition, TSMC has implemented a quarterly dividend system starting this year, with a minimum of NT$10 per share starting next year, and an average cash dividend yield of more than 3%, attracting the favor of foreign capital and long-term funds (such as sovereign funds, life insurance, government funds, etc.). Therefore, they have revised up their profit estimates for this year and next year, and raised their target prices to more than NT$300 (the current highest price is NT$340).
In terms of 7nm process, TSMC has not only received large orders from Apple, Huawei, MediaTek and other customers for mobile processors, but also received orders from AMD for processors and graphics chips in the personal computer field, which has fully loaded the 7nm production capacity. It is expected that the 7nm process (7nm, 7nm+, 6nm) will account for more than 25% of the overall revenue by the end of the year. TSMC's revenue in August benefited from the peak season effect and exceeded the 100 billion yuan mark in one fell swoop, setting a new monthly record. According to TSMC's third quarter performance outlook at the second quarter earnings conference, it is estimated that the quarterly revenue will be between US$9.1 billion and US$9.2 billion, an increase of about 18% from the previous quarter. If calculated on the basis of one US dollar to NT$31, the revenue will be between NT$282.1 billion and NT$285.2 billion, which is expected to set a new record for the same period in history.
Looking at the views of major foreign investors on TSMC, they generally believe that the 7-nanometer process is an important common point. Among them, JPMorgan Chase said that TSMC's 7-nanometer process will increase its revenue by 36% next year, which is the biggest source of growth momentum, especially accounting for 32% of the overall revenue. It is estimated that all of TSMC's 7-nanometer production capacity will be fully booked by customers next year. In addition to 7-nanometer, the progress of 5-nanometer process is also very smooth. Since the second half of this year, the production capacity planning has been continuously increased from about 45,000 pieces to 50,000 pieces per month, and then to 70,000 pieces. 5-nanometer + (plus) is also expected to be produced in small quantities before the end of this year, and will move towards the mass production goal in the first quarter of next year. Legal persons are optimistic that TSMC is expected to take the 5-nanometer orders from Apple and HiSilicon alone next year.
Although competitor GlobalFoundries recently sued TSMC for infringement, TSMC also launched a counterattack, accusing GlobalFoundries of infringing 25 patents including 40nm, 28nm, 22nm, 14nm and 12nm processes in the United States, Germany and Singapore. In fact, the outside world generally believes that there is a considerable gap in the technological level between GlobalFoundries and TSMC, so this infringement case has little impact on TSMC.
In response, TSMC also emphasized that the disputed patents only account for a small part of TSMC's extensive patent portfolio. TSMC currently owns more than 37,000 patents worldwide, and last year it has been among the top ten invention patent holders in the United States for three consecutive years. TSMC is ready to fight in court and will successfully defend the company's reputation, huge investment, technological innovation and leadership, the company's customers and consumers around the world.
Laying out advanced packaging processes
TSMC, which used to focus only on wafer foundry business, entered the packaging field in 2009. Combining wafer foundry with advanced process, it provides customers with one-stop services from front-end wafer foundry to back-end packaging and testing. Currently, TSMC's two mass-produced packaging technologies are InFO (Integrated Fan-Out Packaging) and CoWoS (Chip on Wafer on Substrate Packaging).
InFO packaging technology is actually FOWLP (Fan-Out Wafer level Package), which was proposed by Infineon in Germany in 2008. It is a fan-out wafer-level package that does not require an IC substrate, so the thickness of the chip can be reduced. However, due to problems such as the yield rate not being completely overcome, the FOWLP technology did not immediately become the mainstream in the industry after it was proposed. It was not until TSMC improved the FOWLP technology that it proposed the Integrated Fan-out (InFO) technology in 2015, integrating 16-nanometer logic SoC chips and DRAM chips. It is particularly suitable for low-power, heat-dissipating, small-sized, and high-bandwidth applications, such as smartphones, tablets, and IoT chips. It has been mass-produced since 2016 and successfully won a large order from Apple.
To meet the needs of 5G mobile communications, TSMC has developed an advanced integrated fan-out antenna package (InFO-AIP) technology that integrates the RF chip and the millimeter wave antenna in a fan-out package. InFO-AIP technology provides high-performance, low-power, small-size, and low-cost solutions to support millimeter wave system applications such as 5G mobile and virtual reality (VR) wireless communications; this technology can also support the rapidly evolving automotive radar, autonomous driving, and driving safety applications.
As for CoWoS packaging, it is the main platform for heterogeneous integration of advanced process system-on-chip (SoC) and high-bandwidth memory (HBM). TSMC's leading position in CoWoS technology has been further strengthened by high manufacturing yield, larger silicon interposers and enhanced packaging size capabilities, as well as feature-rich silicon interposers, such as silicon interposers with embedded capacitors. Currently, Huawei HiSilicon, Nvidia, Broadcom, etc. are all TSMC's CoWoS customers, and in the future, they will integrate the above two technologies to develop system-level integrated chips SoICs (System on Integrated Chips).
With the advancement of manufacturing processes, the size of transistors in wafers has gradually decreased, gradually approaching physical limits; and 3D advanced packaging is seen as a tool to extend Moore's Law, improving chip functionality through chip stacking.
3D IC packaging is mainly in response to the advent of the era of heterogeneous integration. In simple terms, heterogeneous integration means packaging processors, data chips, high-frequency memory, CMOS image sensors, and micro-electromechanical systems together. The concept of heterogeneous integration began as early as the 1970s, when it was called MCM (multi-chip module), which was mainly aimed at military and aerospace applications and integrated three- and five-family components. Until 2005, with the rise of smartphones, the industry began to develop towards system-level packaging (SiP), especially for Bluetooth, WiFi, and multi-band cellular communication technologies required by mobile phones, which led to the widespread use of RF modules.
TSMC has recently announced that it has completed the world's first 3D IC packaging, which is expected to be mass-produced in 2021. This is nothing more than a response to the trend of heterogeneous integrated chips. As the proportion of advanced processes increases, the proportion of advanced process packaging will also increase significantly. It is believed that TSMC will be able to compete with professional packaging giants in the future in advanced packaging processes.
8203601PA
京公网安备 11010802033920号