Analysis | TSMC sits out CES, but its role in everything from AMD and Nvidia chips to silicon speakers signals a bright 2023

The contract chip maker has lowered capital expenditures for 2023, but uncontested market dominance makes it best poised to capture a rebound later this year

TSMC, which is known to stay out of the spotlight, has become a more conspicuous presence in the semiconductor industry amid US-China tensions

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Published: 12:00pm, 23 Jan 2023Updated: 12:23pm, 23 Jan 2023

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) likes to remain out of sight, but it is never out of mind. Even as the world’s largest contract chip maker kicked off the year by announcing that it missed fourth-quarter revenue estimates and will lower capital expenditure, the company’s presence in virtually every advanced consumer electronics product suggests it is poised to dominate the market in 2023 even as the industry grapples with a chip glut.

CES 2023 was a perfect illustration of TSMC’s market power. Taiwan’s “sacred mountain” was on full display at the world’s biggest consumer electronics show in Las Vegas this month - even though it did not have its own booth - and semiconductors produced on the island could be seen in everything from the most advanced desktop processors to silicon speakers that could one day replace bulkier audio modules in miniature electronics.

This is not unusual: TSMC produces nearly all of the world’s most advanced chips. But the foundry’s role in the industry has become increasingly visible amid rising US-China tensions and semiconductor-related sanctions from Washington.

Kicking off CES with the first big product announcement on the evening of January 4, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) debuted its latest laptop and desktop computer chips, including the Ryzen 7045 with a maximum of 16 cores and three new chips in the same 7000 line that use 3D V-Cache, which allows for stacking cache memory on a processor.

AMD CEO Lisa Su holds up a Ryzen 7040 series chip during her keynote address at CES on January 4, 2023. Photo: Matt Haldane

Like just about any other top chip designer, AMD’s main manufacturer is TSMC. Its new chips are based on the Taiwanese firm’s 5-nanometre node process and 4-nm, a derivative of 5-nm.