TSMC 28nm Foundry Capacity Deemed Lacking

It seems TSMC is really struggling to meet demand when it comes to 28nm foundry capacity. Big names in the tech industry may begin looking elsewhere, with Qualcomm already shifting some orders to United Microelectronics due in part to TSMC’s inability to meet demands. Others such as AMD and NVIDIA are feeling the crunch due to lack of 28nm production capacity, limiting their ability to get GPUs to market. Case in point: AMD launched the Radeon HD 7970 during the first quarter of 2012, yet has only managed to ship a small volume of said GPU, again due to short 28nm capacity at TSMC. NVIDIA is feeling the pain even more due in part to the fact only 1 Kepler series product has been released with others, being delayed due again to the shortage. With yields improving, TSMC has become more conservative about expanding 28nm capacity to the point that even with the Fab 14 expansion their total foundry capacity is only expected to increase by roughly 10% in 2012 compared to 2011. It is also expected that the shortage currently being experienced should lessen around the end of the third quarter of 2012.