The big picture: TSMC, the world's largest foundry, said in its most contempo financial study that it accustomed an unprecedented amount in advance payments for its future manufacturing capacity this year. Hopefully, that money will accelerate the construction of new equipment to build processors. As the public-facing figurer manufacturers continue to fail to deliver hardware into the hands of consumers, the attention has turned towards the foundries for long-term solutions to the flake shortage.

In the by, the master style TSMC has allowed customers to reserve capacity was through "guarantee deposits," a one-time payment from that was refunded when the customer finalized their order.

TSMC is standing to have guarantee deposits; in fact, most two-thirds of the NT$642 (US$23) million of guarantee deposits that it's holding were paid in the past nine months. But this year, the company shifted its focus onto "temporary receipts" for future capacity, which are finer pre-payments.

TSMC signed deals for NT$106 (US$3.8) billion in temporary receipts this year.

Credit: Fritzchens Fritz

The money isn't TSMC'south to go along until it's met the "terms and atmospheric condition set forth in the agreements" with its customers, and hence there are rules almost how it can exist spent. Simply the idea is that TSMC volition use it to create more than manufacturing chapters for customers to buy.

TSMC'due south report doesn't disembalm the details of the agreements nor does it say who the customers are. At a judge, the largest is probably Apple tree, which taps TSMC for all its iPhone and Mac SoCs. AMD could exist close behind. Last month, AMD said that it had prepaid US$355 one thousand thousand to various foundries this yr. Qualcomm is probably up at that place, too.

Neither Intel nor Nvidia rely heavily on TSMC at the moment, but both have reportedly been discussing the manufacture of their next-gen GPUs with the foundry. At some bespeak in the future, TSMC might be the sole supplier of GPU chips.