Recently, there has been an analysis suggesting that the supply of artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductors from the US company Nvidia, which is leading global stock markets with its performance exceeding expectations, could be limited by the production capacity of its partner, Taiwan's TSMC.
On the 25th, Charles Shum, a Bloomberg Intelligence (BI) analyst, stated in a recent report that "Nvidia's AI semiconductor boom this year may still hit the production capacity wall of TSMC."
To produce Nvidia's AI semiconductors, the advanced packaging process 'Chip on Wafer on Substrate' (CoWoS) of TSMC, the world's largest foundry (semiconductor contract manufacturing) company, is required, but bottlenecks remain in this process.
The report, based on data from market research firm International Data Corporation (IDC), analyzed that Nvidia would need about half of TSMC's CoWoS production capacity to fulfill all its AI semiconductor orders, but currently, it has secured only about one-third.
TSMC is expected to expand the production capacity of this process by approximately 124% by the end of this year compared to the end of last year, but amid the AI boom, companies including Nvidia, AMD, and Broadcom are competing for TSMC's production capacity.
The report also predicted that Nvidia could play a "lifeline" role in TSMC's 4-nanometer (nm; one billionth of a meter) semiconductor segment. Nvidia is expected to use TSMC's 4nm process for its upcoming B100 semiconductor, which could optimize the utilization of TSMC's 4nm and 5nm production capacities.
The 4nm and 5nm processes account for about 12% of TSMC's total production capacity and represented one-third of last year's revenue. This year, as other clients like Apple and Qualcomm move to 3nm, TSMC's 4nm and 5nm production capacity may become surplus, potentially burdening growth.
Meanwhile, TSMC's stock price has been reacting sensitively to Nvidia-related news. On the 15th, TSMC's stock price rose by as much as 7.89%, reaching a new high. US CNBC interpreted that Morgan Stanley's upward revision of Nvidia's target stock price positively influenced TSMC's stock movement at that time.
However, cautious views remain regarding the rosy outlook surrounding Nvidia, and there are assessments that if Nvidia's stock price rise slows down, it could put pressure on the prices of related stocks, including TSMC.
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