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Global heavyweight customers of TSMC are rushing to highlight the foundry giant's 7nm process support as a major booster for their new products, the latest case being AMD announcing the adoption of foundry house's 7nm node for fabricating its new-generation EPYC server processors, at its Next Horizon event held on November 7.

At the event, AMD CEO Lisa Su and other ranking executives repeatedly stressed that the firm's second-generation EPYC server processor is the world's first CPU fabricated on 7nm process at TSMC, and that its Radeon Instinct MI60 and MI50 accelerators designed for AI and machine learning are also built on 7nm node.

Earlier, China smartphone vendor Huawei, when releasing its Mate 20 model at 2018 IFA held early September in Berlin, also highlighted that the new model features the latest Kirin 980 SoC fabricated on TSMC's 7nm process enabling high-performance AI computing capability and low power consumption.

In launching new iPhones in mid-September, Apple also made a rare revelation of the spec of the A12 chip, which was touted as the world's fastest chip produced on 7nm process at TSMC.

Also, Xilinx has reiterated that its new-generation Versal APACs to be in full supply in the second half of 2019 will adopt TSMC's latest 7nm FinFET process, while China's crypto mining ASIC makers Canaan and Bitmain have also disclosed that their latest products will be fabricated by TSMC with 7nm node.

Optimism for 2019

TSMC is still quite optimistic about its business prospects for 2019 despite the US-China trade war, thanks to its leadership in advanced processes.

Samsung and Intel have yet to release clear timetables for the progress of advanced process technologies, but TSMC is estimated to complete over 50 tape-outs for 7nm process by the end of 2018, and the figure will expand to 100 by the end of 2019.

Meanwhile, TSMC's revenue ratio for 7nm process is estimated to surpass 20% in the fourth quarter of 2018, and soar further for the whole 2019. TSMC's 7nm capacity is expected to be fully utilized to fulfill massive orders from Apple, Huawei/HiSilicon, Qualcomm, Nvidia, AMD, Xilinx, and other AI chipmakers in 2019.

Besides leading in the development of advanced fabrication processes, TSMC is capable of rendering integrated services covering foundry, packaging and complete platform ecosystem, allowing the company to win high trust from global customers and far outperforming Samsung in winning orders.