A rumor from Taiwan's United Daily News today states that Apple's product lines will be greatly enhanced in 2024. Their next-gen M4 for MacBooks and A18 processor for the iPhone and iPad will significantly increase the number of built-in AI computing cores. AI application deployment rates across all of Apple's major product lines Will be greatly improved.

This year, TSMC will invest in the 3nm Enhanced (known as 3NE) version process. The chip volume is expected to increase by more than 50% compared with last year, and a large amount of advanced packaging production capacity will be contracted, which will inject TSMC's operational heat transfer.

According to industry sources, Apple’s wafer production volume for TSMC’s 3nm Enhanced version process this year is expected to increase by more than 50% compared with last year, making it firmly the largest customer of TSMC. 

In addition to increasing its investment in TSMC, Apple has also secured a large amount of advanced packaging production capacity from TSMC. According to the industry, Apple is still mainly placing orders with TSMC for 2.5D advanced packaging processes such as InFO and CoWoS (a part of TSMC's 3DFabric).

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This year, there is an opportunity to push the demand for advanced packaging to the most expensive and difficult 3D architecture SoIC advanced packaging, which means that TSMC will simultaneously hold Apple's wafers. OEM for advanced processes and advanced packaging and other large orders.

It is understood that in response to large orders for advanced processes and advanced packaging from major customers such as Apple, NVIDIA, and AMD in the next few years, TSMC will fully expand its 3nm family production capacity and advanced packaging production capacity this year. For more, read the full UDN report.