Cryptocurrency mining demand sucking up TSMC IC production

March 27, 2018 // By Peter Clarke, eeNews

TSMC's leading-edge manufacturing capacity is being made tight by strong demand for GPUs and special-purpose ASICs for use in cryptocurrency mining, according to a Digitimes report.

So tight is TSMC's supply at the 16 and 12nm nodes that it is losing some cryptocurrency business to Samsung the report said. The potential of cryptocurrency mining chip orders to serve as a demand driver was noted by TSMC in its 4Q17 financial results conference (see TSMC talks cryptocurrency as sales driver ).

Now TSMC's 16nm and 12nm process production capacity has been tight in the first quarter of 2018 due to the demand for cryptocurrency mining IC, Digitimes said referencing unnamed sources. That said TSMC's sales figures have been somewhat lacklustre in the first couple of months of 2018, compared with the same period in 2018 (see TSMC sales plunged in February ).

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