Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

CTOnews.com Sept. 1 news, industry chain source @ Mobile Chip Talent said on Weibo, "as the capacity utilization of advanced processes begins to decline, and the decline will continue for a period of time after the evaluation, TSMC plans to shut down some EUV equipment from the end of the year, in order to save the huge power consumption of EUV equipment." According to previous reports, EUV lithography requires about 30,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity a day and consumes about 1000 million kilowatt-hours of electricity a year.

CTOnews.com learned that news began to spread in July this year that due to the depressed demand in the consumer electronics market, many chip manufacturers were begged by customers, and even TSMC could not be spared, saying that the prices of many chips had plunged frequently, with some chip prices falling by 80% and some chip prices falling from 200 yuan to 21.50 yuan. Prior to the "lack of core" wave swept the world, many chip manufacturers in order to meet customer demand and quickly seize the market and greatly expand production. However, since the beginning of this year, there has been a marked decline in demand in the consumer electronics market, resulting in an oversupply of related chips, resulting in order-cutting and price cuts, manufacturers canceling production expansion plans and so on.

According to reports, TSMC currently has about 80 EUV lithography machines, mainly used for 7nm, 5nm, 4nm and other advanced processes. In September this year, TSMC will also plan to mass produce 3nm process, all of which will require EUV lithography machines, but Apple may be the only customer left for the first order of 3nm process. Therefore, TSMC has decided to slow down its production expansion progress to ensure that production capacity will not be overly idle and lead to cost pressure.

According to Bloomberg, ASML's new generation of EUV lithography machines each consume about 1 million watts of power, about 10 times that of previous generations of equipment, and are expected to account for 12.5 percent of Taiwan's total energy consumption in 2025. The chip industry may become an important stumbling block to reducing global carbon emissions.

However, in response to questions from the outside world that the development of advanced processes consumes a lot of electricity, TSMC quotes the analysis results of the International Institute of Industrial Science and Technology International Strategic Development Institute (ISTI) of the Industrial Research Institute in 2020, saying that for every kilowatt-hour of production used by TSMC, it can save four kilowatt-hours of electricity worldwide.

TSMC said that the company continues to promote advanced semiconductor process technology to produce more advanced, energy-efficient and environmentally friendly products. In addition, the company actively invests in green manufacturing and implements actions related to energy conservation and carbon reduction, including efforts to optimize the energy efficiency of the process, while working with machine equipment manufacturers to develop new energy-saving action plans.

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