TSMC

https://www.tsmc.com/download/ir/annualReports/2017_Business_Overview_E.pdf

Industry insiders tell that GlobalFoundries will be completely sold part by part to different manufacturers, their top assets can be bough by companies who still in this rat race.

TSMC 7nm process can actually have issues

Rumors are that costs of TSMC production is still pretty high and suitable for top smartphones only.

AMD new Radeon shortages are related to this.

Same as postponing new Ryzen release, industry rumors are that actual CPUs release will be divided by stages with only top price CPUs coming around September-October and most popular ones can be shifted up to December.

AMD mass market GPU Navi chips release will be also shifted to November-December on even to after 2020 CES.

200mm Wafer production rise as sign of issues

Start of trend on this curve exactly coincide with Intel 14 first issues and inability to move to 10nm fast.

Also everywhere in industry you can see old equipment being put back to work. As specialists do not expect any real progress soon.

Intel 10nm mass production can be shifted further into 2020

Rumors started spreading that in the fall of 2019 we can see another false start of Intel 10nm process. Yields are still really horrible without any light in the tunnel ahead.
In the fall we can see release of 2-4 processors with really high prices to make supply volumes fit existing production.

Industry rumors are that Samsung is talking to buy most GlobalFoundries assets. Same as I said before already.

The semiconductor roadmap could extend a decade to a 1-nm node or it could falter before the 3-nm node for lack of new resist chemistries.

People now talk about disturbing uncertainties that are natural outgrowths of the many challenges perpetually appearing on the path to next-generation chip.

One of the next big challenges is brewing more sensitive resist materials for the 3-nm node. Today’s chemically amplified resists (CARs) “are OK for the current and maybe next generation, but we’d like new platforms,” said Tony Yen, a vice president at ASML.

The resists are one way to reduce random errors known as stochastics, an old problem but one raising its head aggressively as engineers push toward the 5-nm node. Yen was bullish that ASML will deal with the defects that threaten yields.

Phillipe Leray, a metrology specialist at imec, was less optimistic. “We have to tackle the defect challenge in the near future,” he said. “Time is running out, and I don’t see any solution around the corner.”

The challenges are so steep that engineers are widening the scope of solutions they are considering in every area of chip technology. “We are looking at just about everything in advanced patterning,” said consultant Erik Hosler, noting that EUV emerged from the advanced patterning section of the conference that he now helps oversee.

Moving to 450-mm wafers and 9-inch reticles is one of the few areas not worth pursuing given the cost and limited payback. “We had an extensive 450-mm effort years ago, but you need a whole ecosystem, and without it, we won’t drive that change,” said Rich Wise, a technology manager at Lam Research.

“We are making progress, but we can extrapolate to where features are less than the diameter of a silicon atom, so lithography-driven scaling will come to an end,” said Harry Levinson, a lithographer with AMD and GlobalFoundries for more than 30 years.

“Limits do exist, but the best way around them is to change the paradigm,” said Chris Mack, a veteran consultant and author on lithography. “The brick wall is often in our own minds — innovations can move it and then we repeat the process of pushing.”

Almost all will be talking about brick wall one year from now and in two years all main industries will hit it.

Although Intel has announced its 10nm Ice Lake will begin mass production in the second half of 2019, Digitimes Research's sources from the upstream supply chain has revealed that there are still many issues with the CPU giant's mass production schedule for 10nm process.

Intel previously said that its new 14nm Comet Lake would have a performance not worse than Ice Lake. Digitimes Research believes Intel could shift its investments directly to 7nm process development, skipping 10nm.

Things are bad, really bad.

3D stacking of RAM and NAND is nothing new, for example it had been used in lot of Panasonic cameras.
But almost all new cameras not using it.

Issue is heat dissipation, you can't stack RAM on top of desktop processor, as this is thing that managers keep telling to investors to calm them. Not only your processor frequency will need to drop a lot, but you will also get lot of issues with memory as need to move back to much larger elements to keep it stable.

Intel will certainly try something like this in the low end, Atom power level chips, and may be Y chips. But even in U chips it will be issues.

New Xbox and Playstation are delayed till 2020 at least

TSMC is having issues with ramping up 7nm production and still don't have good costs for now. it is enough for premium products but not for profit limited ones.

We can see also very strange scenery with Ryzen 2 release. Some models can be available only months after announcement or even early 2020.

The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) has disclosed semiconductor sales for February 2019 fell 7.3% on month and 10.6% from a year earlier to US$32.9 billion. Sales declined on both sequential and bases across all regional markets. February semiconductor sales in the Americas registered decreases of 12.9% sequentially and 22.9% on year, while those in China were down 7.8% on month and 8.5% from the same period in 2018

NAND and DRAM price drops play important role here, but any sales drop are very dangerous for industry where costs are exponentially rising. And it is no place for mergers already.

AMD's 7nm CPU and GPU are expected to be adopted by Sony in its next-generation PlayStation and the processors are estimated to be ready in the third quarter of 2020 for the games console's expected release in the second half of 2020, according to industry sources.

The sources from the IC back-end services sector noted that the processors' packaging and testing will be handled by Advanced Semiconductor Engineering (ASE) and Siliconware Precision Industries (SPIL).

We have some issue with 7nm TSMC process companies try to cover up. And note - this process is very close to modern 14nm by Intel and much less advanced compared to 10nm that Intel fails to make working for last years.

GlobalFoundries is being sold part by part now.

ON Semiconductor Corporation (Nasdaq: ON) (“ON Semiconductor”) and GLOBALFOUNDRIES today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement for ON Semiconductor to acquire a 300mm fab located in East Fishkill, New York. The total consideration for the acquisition is $430 million, of which $100 million has been paid at signing of the definitive agreement, and $330 million will be paid at the end of 2022, after which ON Semiconductor will gain full operational control of the fab, and the site’s employees will transition to ON Semiconductor. Completion of the transaction is subject to regulatory approval and other customary closing conditions.

The agreement allows ON Semiconductor to increase its 300mm production at the East Fishkill fab over several years, and allows for GLOBALFOUNDRIES to transition its numerous technologies to the company’s three other at-scale 300mm sites. Under the terms of the agreement, GLOBALFOUNDRIES will manufacture 300mm wafers for ON Semiconductor until the end of 2022. First production of 300mm wafers for ON Semiconductor is expected to start in 2020.

https://www.globalfoundries.com/news-events/press-releases/semiconductor-and-globalfoundries-partner-transfer-ownership-east