According to a new report, TSMC's 3nm process wafers will be significantly more expensivein the near future. As wafers are an integral and high-margin piece of the assembly line, such a price hike is very likely to affect the prices of many new generation products.
The products that would rise the most in price would be high-end CPUs and GPUs, which are the ones that these wafers are expected to use. Therefore, the prices of future high-end components are expected to be even higher than what we are already used to.
No price cuts expected on future high-end products made by TSMC
TSMC's foundry is the most in-demand when it comes to the next-gen 3nm process segment, and it looks like it's going to take advantage of that fact to increase profits. That would mean higher prices for products from AMD, NVIDIA and Apple that will hit the market in a few years.
The 5nm process, the one currently used by the RTX 4090 from Nvidia, for example; It already represents a big leap compared to 7nm in terms of prices. The price per wafer went from $10.000 to $16.000. Now TSMC is planning a similar increase, jumping from $16.000 to $20.000 or more.
Both AMD and Nvidia rely on TSMC. AMD has managed to keep prices reasonable with the upcoming Radeon RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT. But for Nvidia, they have had to raise the prices of the RTX 4090 and 4080. AMD has cheapened things a bit by mixing different nodes to try to reduce costs. They use both 5nm and 6nm in their recent products.
Assuming both manufacturers switch to TSMC's 3nm for the next generation of graphics cards, costs will increase across the board. AMD could continue with the mix and match strategy it is using now to be able to boast of having better prices than NVDIIA, which in the end, will be a big factor for consumers, given that the performance of something like an RTX 4090 or a future RTX 5090 would only be exploited with high-end televisions that are not widespread enough.
Source: Digital Trends
