TSMC Forecasts Blockbuster Q4 Thanks To NVIDIA GeForce GTX 11 Turing GPU Orders
Things are looking up for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) after the company posted a decline in revenue for its quarter ending in June. TSMC is now predicting significant increases in revenue moving through the third and fourth quarters of 2018. The gain in revenue is, according to industry sources, thanks to the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 11 Series GPU and Apple's A12 SoC. Apple is rolling out three new iPhones in September, according to rumors, that will all use the A12 SoC that TSMC builds on its 7nm process technology.
NVIDIA is also tapping TSMC for its GeForce GTX 11 GPU tech to leverage TSMC's 7nm process. The 7nm process technology that TSMC has is in such high demand that the foundry was ramping production greatly in June to meet customer demand. Sources claim that TSMC is expected to post moderate revenue growth sequentially in Q3 2018 before reaching an all-time high revenue metric in Q4. The massive number of iPhones that Apple is predicted to sell in the second half of 2018 is cited as one of the significant contributing factors to the revenue growth (Apple shipments are expected to peak between October and November).
TSMC will also begin shipping HiSilicon Kirin 980 7nm chips that will be used inside the Huawei Mate 20 flagship smartphone that is set for launch in Q4.
June was a rough month for the chipmaker with a 13% decline sequentially in revenue that resulted in a decline in overall revenue of 6% for the quarter to about $7.63 billion. That decline is blamed in part on a decrease in orders for cryptocurrency mining ASICs from Bitmain and GPUs from NVIDIA. Despite a poor June, TSMC has still posted an increase in revenue for the first half of 2018 of 7.5% compared to the same period of 2017.
