We had known for quite some time that 28nm production at TSMC was really kicking-off, with the firm itself reporting great uptake and more customers than ever; however, a report from DIGITIMES suggests that the company has hit the roof of its 28nm production, with pleanty of requests for parts still in its inbox.
It's reported that AMD, NVIDIA and Qualcomm have been hit the most by this shortage, with Qualcomm even shifting some component orders over to Microelectronics, however, ultimately falling short on supply against large demand for its mobile processors.
This report tends to line-up with suggestions we made last month, with smartphone OEMs tending to favour NVIDIA's Tegra 3 stockpile as a secondary choice outside of 4G regions. Likewise, AMD has been sending over limited shipments of 28nm components, with the late release of NVIDIA Kepler parts partly attributed to production levels.
Thankfully, the shortage is expected ease by the end of the third quarter and with any luck we'll start to see the products and stock that manufacturers had always intended. TSMC is, of course, taking measures to prevent capacity issues in the future and, with the upcoming launch of its Fab 14 site, the firm expects to increase total capacity by 10 per cent over the year.
