TSMCs Q2'24 Results: Best Quarter Ever as HPC Revenue Share Exceeds 52% on AI Demand
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. this week said its revenue for the second quarter 2024 reached $20.82 billion, making it the company's best quarter (at least in dollars) to date. TSMC's high-performance computing (HPC) platform revenue share exceeded 52% for the first time in many years due to demand for AI processors and rebound of the PC market.
TSMC earned $20.82 billion USD in revenue for the second quarter of 2024, a 32.8% year-over-year increase and a 10.3% increase from the previous quarter. Perhaps more remarkable, $20.82 billion is a higher result than the company posted Q3 2022 ($20.23 billion), the foundry's best quarter to date. Otherwise, in terms of profitability, TSMC booked $7.59 billion in net income for the quarter, for a gross margin of 53.2%. This is a decent bit off of TSMC's record margin of 60.4% (Q3'22), and comes as the company is still in the process of further ramping its N3 (3nm-class) fab lines.
When it comes to wafer revenue share, the company's N3 process technologies (3nm-class) accounted for 15% of wafer revenue in Q2 (up from 9% in the previous quarter), N5 production nodes (4nm and 5nm-classes) commanded 35% of TSMC's earnings in the second quarter (down from 37% in Q1 2024), and N7 fabrication processes (6nm and 7nm-classes) accounted for 17% of the foundry's wafer revenue in the second quarter of 2024 (down from 19% in Q1 2024). Advanced technologies all together (N3, N5, N7) accounted for 67% of total wafer revenue.
"Our business in the second quarter was supported by strong demand for our industry-leading 3nm and 5nm technologies, partially offset by continued smartphone seasonality," said Wendell Huang, Senior VP and Chief Financial Officer of TSMC. "Moving into third quarter 2024, we expect our business to be supported by strong smartphone and AI-related demand for our leading-edge process technologies."
TSMC usually starts ramping up production for Apple's fall products (e.g. iPhone) in the second quarter of the year, so it is not surprising that revenue share of N3 increased in Q2 of this year. Yet, keeping in mind that TSMC's revenue in general increased by 10.3% QoQ, the company's shipments of processors made on N5 and N7 nodes are showing resilience as demand for AI and HPC processors is high across the industry.
Speaking of TSMC's HPC sales, HPC platform sales accounted for 52% of TSMC's revenue for the first time in many years. The world's largest contract maker of chips produces many types of chips that get placed under the HPC umbrella, including AI processors, CPUs for client PCs, and system-on-chips (SoCs) for consoles, just to name a few. Yet, in this case TSMC attributes demand for AI processors as the main driver for its HPC success.
As for smartphone platform revenue, its share dropped to 33% as actual sales declined by 1% quarter-over-quarter. All other segments grew by 5% to 20%.
For the third quarter of 2024, TSMC expects revenue between US$22.4 billion and US$23.2 billion, with a gross profit margin of 53.5% to 55.5% and an operating profit margin of 42.5% to 44.5%. The company's sales are projected to be driven by strong demand for leading-edge process technologies as well as increased demand for AI and smartphones-related applications.
Semiconductors
Posted by The Techinical Support
The Endorfy Fortis 5 Dual Fan CPU Cooler Review: Towering Value Standard CPU coolers, while adequate for managing basic thermal loads, often fall short in terms of noise reduction and superior cooling efficiency. This limitation drives advanced users and system builders to seek aftermarket solutions tailored to their specific needs. The high-end aftermarket cooler market is highly competitive, with manufacturers striving to offer products with exceptional performance.
Endorfy, previously known as SilentiumPC, is a Polish manufacturer that has undergone a significant transformation to expand its presence in global markets. The brand is known for delivering high-performance cooling solutions with a strong focus on balancing efficiency and affordability. By rebranding as Endorfy, the company aims to enter premium market segments while continuing to offer reliable, high-quality cooling products.
SilentiumPC became very popular in the value/mainstream segments of the PC market with their products, the spearhead of which probably was the Fera 5 cooler that we reviewed a little over two years ago and had a remarkable value for money. Today’s review places Endorfy’s largest CPU cooler, the Fortis 5 Dual Fan, on our laboratory test bench. The Fortis 5 is the largest CPU air cooler the company currently offers and is significantly more expensive than the Fera 5, yet it still is a single-tower cooler that strives to strike a balance between value, compatibility, and performance.
Cases/Cooling/PSUs
Intel Sells Its Arm Shares, Reduces Stakes in Other Companies 
Intel has divested its entire stake in Arm Holdings during the second quarter, raising approximately $147 million. Alongside this, Intel sold its stake in cybersecurity firm ZeroFox and reduced its holdings in Astera Labs, all as part of a broader effort to manage costs and recover cash amid significant financial challenges.
The sale of Intel's 1.18 million shares in Arm Holdings, as reported in a recent SEC filing, comes at a time when the company is struggling with substantial financial losses. Despite the $147 million generated from the sale, Intel reported a $120 million net loss on its equity investments for the quarter, which is a part of a larger $1.6 billion loss that Intel faced during this period.
In addition to selling its stake in Arm, Intel also exited its investment in ZeroFox and reduced its involvement with Astera Labs, a company known for developing connectivity platforms for enterprise hardware. These moves are in line with Intel's strategy to reduce costs and stabilize its financial position as it faces ongoing market challenges.
Despite the divestment, Intel's past investment in Arm was likely driven by strategic considerations. Arm Holdings is a significant force in the semiconductor industry, with its designs powering most mobile devices, and, for obvious reasons, Intel would like to address these. Intel and Arm are also collaborating on datacenter platforms tailored for Intel's 18A process technology. Additionally, Arm might view Intel as a potential licensee for its technologies and a valuable partner for other companies that license Arm's designs.
Intel's investment in Astera Labs was also a strategic one as the company probably wanted to secure steady supply of smart retimers, smart cable modems, and CXL memory controller, which are used in volumes in datacenters and Intel is certainly interested in selling as many datacenter CPUs as possible.
Intel's financial struggles were highlighted earlier this month when the company released a disappointing earnings report, which led to a 33% drop in its stock value, erasing billions of dollars of capitalization. To counter these difficulties, Intel announced plans to cut 15,000 jobs and implement other expense reductions. The company has also suspended its dividend, signaling the depth of its efforts to conserve cash and focus on recovery. When it comes to divestment of Arm stock, the need for immediate financial stabilization has presumably taken precedence, leading to the decision.
CPUs
Silicon Motion Demonstrates Flexible Data Placement on MonTitan Gen 5 Enterprise SSD Platform 
At FMS 2024, the technological requirements from the storage and memory subsystem took center stage. Both SSD and controller vendors had various demonstrations touting their suitability for different stages of the AI data pipeline - ingestion, preparation, training, checkpointing, and inference. Vendors like Solidigm have different types of SSDs optimized for different stages of the pipeline. At the same time, controller vendors have taken advantage of one of the features introduced recently in the NVM Express standard - Flexible Data Placement (FDP).
FDP involves the host providing information / hints about the areas where the controller could place the incoming write data in order to reduce the write amplification. These hints are generated based on specific block sizes advertised by the device. The feature is completely backwards-compatible, with non-FDP hosts working just as before with FDP-enabled SSDs, and vice-versa.
Silicon Motion's MonTitan Gen 5 Enterprise SSD Platform was announced back in 2022. Since then, Silicon Motion has been touting the flexibility of the platform, allowing its customers to incorporate their own features as part of the customization process. This approach is common in the enterprise space, as we have seen with Marvell's Bravera SC5 SSD controller in the DapuStor SSDs and Microchip's Flashtec controllers in the Longsys FORESEE enterprise SSDs.
At FMS 2024, the company was demonstrating the advantages of flexible data placement by allowing a single QLC SSD based on their MonTitan platform to take part in different stages of the AI data pipeline while maintaining the required quality of service (minimum bandwidth) for each process. The company even has a trademarked name (PerformaShape) for the firmware feature in the controller that allows the isolation of different concurrent SSD accesses (from different stages in the AI data pipeline) to guarantee this QoS. Silicon Motion claims that this scheme will enable its customers to get the maximum write performance possible from QLC SSDs without negatively impacting the performance of other types of accesses.
Silicon Motion and Phison have market leadership in the client SSD controller market with similar approaches. However, their enterprise SSD controller marketing couldn't be more different. While Phison has gone in for a turnkey solution with their Gen 5 SSD platform (to the extent of not adopting the white label route for this generation, and instead opting to get the SSDs qualified with different cloud service providers themselves), Silicon Motion is opting for a different approach. The flexibility and customization possibilities can make platforms like the MonTitan appeal to flash array vendors.
Storage
The Endorfy Fortis 5 Dual Fan CPU Cooler Review: Towering Value Standard CPU coolers, while adequate for managing basic thermal loads, often fall short in terms of noise reduction and superior cooling efficiency. This limitation drives advanced users and system builders to seek aftermarket solutions tailored to their specific needs. The high-end aftermarket cooler market is highly competitive, with manufacturers striving to offer products with exceptional performance.
Endorfy, previously known as SilentiumPC, is a Polish manufacturer that has undergone a significant transformation to expand its presence in global markets. The brand is known for delivering high-performance cooling solutions with a strong focus on balancing efficiency and affordability. By rebranding as Endorfy, the company aims to enter premium market segments while continuing to offer reliable, high-quality cooling products.
SilentiumPC became very popular in the value/mainstream segments of the PC market with their products, the spearhead of which probably was the Fera 5 cooler that we reviewed a little over two years ago and had a remarkable value for money. Today’s review places Endorfy’s largest CPU cooler, the Fortis 5 Dual Fan, on our laboratory test bench. The Fortis 5 is the largest CPU air cooler the company currently offers and is significantly more expensive than the Fera 5, yet it still is a single-tower cooler that strives to strike a balance between value, compatibility, and performance.
Cases/Cooling/PSUs
Intel Sells Its Arm Shares, Reduces Stakes in Other Companies
Intel has divested its entire stake in Arm Holdings during the second quarter, raising approximately $147 million. Alongside this, Intel sold its stake in cybersecurity firm ZeroFox and reduced its holdings in Astera Labs, all as part of a broader effort to manage costs and recover cash amid significant financial challenges.
The sale of Intel's 1.18 million shares in Arm Holdings, as reported in a recent SEC filing, comes at a time when the company is struggling with substantial financial losses. Despite the $147 million generated from the sale, Intel reported a $120 million net loss on its equity investments for the quarter, which is a part of a larger $1.6 billion loss that Intel faced during this period.
In addition to selling its stake in Arm, Intel also exited its investment in ZeroFox and reduced its involvement with Astera Labs, a company known for developing connectivity platforms for enterprise hardware. These moves are in line with Intel's strategy to reduce costs and stabilize its financial position as it faces ongoing market challenges.
Despite the divestment, Intel's past investment in Arm was likely driven by strategic considerations. Arm Holdings is a significant force in the semiconductor industry, with its designs powering most mobile devices, and, for obvious reasons, Intel would like to address these. Intel and Arm are also collaborating on datacenter platforms tailored for Intel's 18A process technology. Additionally, Arm might view Intel as a potential licensee for its technologies and a valuable partner for other companies that license Arm's designs.
Intel's investment in Astera Labs was also a strategic one as the company probably wanted to secure steady supply of smart retimers, smart cable modems, and CXL memory controller, which are used in volumes in datacenters and Intel is certainly interested in selling as many datacenter CPUs as possible.
Intel's financial struggles were highlighted earlier this month when the company released a disappointing earnings report, which led to a 33% drop in its stock value, erasing billions of dollars of capitalization. To counter these difficulties, Intel announced plans to cut 15,000 jobs and implement other expense reductions. The company has also suspended its dividend, signaling the depth of its efforts to conserve cash and focus on recovery. When it comes to divestment of Arm stock, the need for immediate financial stabilization has presumably taken precedence, leading to the decision.
CPUs
Silicon Motion Demonstrates Flexible Data Placement on MonTitan Gen 5 Enterprise SSD Platform
At FMS 2024, the technological requirements from the storage and memory subsystem took center stage. Both SSD and controller vendors had various demonstrations touting their suitability for different stages of the AI data pipeline - ingestion, preparation, training, checkpointing, and inference. Vendors like Solidigm have different types of SSDs optimized for different stages of the pipeline. At the same time, controller vendors have taken advantage of one of the features introduced recently in the NVM Express standard - Flexible Data Placement (FDP).
FDP involves the host providing information / hints about the areas where the controller could place the incoming write data in order to reduce the write amplification. These hints are generated based on specific block sizes advertised by the device. The feature is completely backwards-compatible, with non-FDP hosts working just as before with FDP-enabled SSDs, and vice-versa.
Silicon Motion's MonTitan Gen 5 Enterprise SSD Platform was announced back in 2022. Since then, Silicon Motion has been touting the flexibility of the platform, allowing its customers to incorporate their own features as part of the customization process. This approach is common in the enterprise space, as we have seen with Marvell's Bravera SC5 SSD controller in the DapuStor SSDs and Microchip's Flashtec controllers in the Longsys FORESEE enterprise SSDs.
At FMS 2024, the company was demonstrating the advantages of flexible data placement by allowing a single QLC SSD based on their MonTitan platform to take part in different stages of the AI data pipeline while maintaining the required quality of service (minimum bandwidth) for each process. The company even has a trademarked name (PerformaShape) for the firmware feature in the controller that allows the isolation of different concurrent SSD accesses (from different stages in the AI data pipeline) to guarantee this QoS. Silicon Motion claims that this scheme will enable its customers to get the maximum write performance possible from QLC SSDs without negatively impacting the performance of other types of accesses.
Silicon Motion and Phison have market leadership in the client SSD controller market with similar approaches. However, their enterprise SSD controller marketing couldn't be more different. While Phison has gone in for a turnkey solution with their Gen 5 SSD platform (to the extent of not adopting the white label route for this generation, and instead opting to get the SSDs qualified with different cloud service providers themselves), Silicon Motion is opting for a different approach. The flexibility and customization possibilities can make platforms like the MonTitan appeal to flash array vendors.
Storage
Silicon Motion Demonstrates Flexible Data Placement on MonTitan Gen 5 Enterprise SSD Platform
At FMS 2024, the technological requirements from the storage and memory subsystem took center stage. Both SSD and controller vendors had various demonstrations touting their suitability for different stages of the AI data pipeline - ingestion, preparation, training, checkpointing, and inference. Vendors like Solidigm have different types of SSDs optimized for different stages of the pipeline. At the same time, controller vendors have taken advantage of one of the features introduced recently in the NVM Express standard - Flexible Data Placement (FDP).
FDP involves the host providing information / hints about the areas where the controller could place the incoming write data in order to reduce the write amplification. These hints are generated based on specific block sizes advertised by the device. The feature is completely backwards-compatible, with non-FDP hosts working just as before with FDP-enabled SSDs, and vice-versa.
Silicon Motion's MonTitan Gen 5 Enterprise SSD Platform was announced back in 2022. Since then, Silicon Motion has been touting the flexibility of the platform, allowing its customers to incorporate their own features as part of the customization process. This approach is common in the enterprise space, as we have seen with Marvell's Bravera SC5 SSD controller in the DapuStor SSDs and Microchip's Flashtec controllers in the Longsys FORESEE enterprise SSDs.
At FMS 2024, the company was demonstrating the advantages of flexible data placement by allowing a single QLC SSD based on their MonTitan platform to take part in different stages of the AI data pipeline while maintaining the required quality of service (minimum bandwidth) for each process. The company even has a trademarked name (PerformaShape) for the firmware feature in the controller that allows the isolation of different concurrent SSD accesses (from different stages in the AI data pipeline) to guarantee this QoS. Silicon Motion claims that this scheme will enable its customers to get the maximum write performance possible from QLC SSDs without negatively impacting the performance of other types of accesses.
Silicon Motion and Phison have market leadership in the client SSD controller market with similar approaches. However, their enterprise SSD controller marketing couldn't be more different. While Phison has gone in for a turnkey solution with their Gen 5 SSD platform (to the extent of not adopting the white label route for this generation, and instead opting to get the SSDs qualified with different cloud service providers themselves), Silicon Motion is opting for a different approach. The flexibility and customization possibilities can make platforms like the MonTitan appeal to flash array vendors.
Storage
![](https://twitter.com/share?url=https://compbuddey.blogspot.com/2024/08/tsmcs-q224-results-best-quarter-ever-as_2.html&text=TSMCs Q2'24 Results: Best Quarter Ever as HPC Revenue Share Exceeds 52% on AI Demand <p align="center"><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21481/tsmcs-q2-results-best-quarter-ever-as-hpc-revenue-share-exceeds-52-on-ai-demand-"><img src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21481/tsmc-fab-678-407A7635_3_575px.jpg" alt="" /></a></p><p><p>Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. this week said its revenue for the second quarter 2024 reached $20.82 billion, making it the company's best quarter (at least in dollars) to date. TSMC's high-performance computing (HPC) platform revenue share exceeded 52% for the first time in many years due to demand for AI processors and rebound of the PC market.</p>
<p>TSMC earned <a href="https://investor.tsmc.com/english/encrypt/files/encrypt_file/reports/2024-07/a152eded224aa1b83fdf342ed71d4c42af013915/2Q24EarningsRelease.pdf">$20.82 billion</a> USD in revenue for the second quarter of 2024, a 32.8% year-over-year increase and a 10.3% increase from the previous quarter. Perhaps more remarkable, $20.82 billion is a higher result than the company posted Q3 2022 (<a href="https://investor.tsmc.com/english/encrypt/files/encrypt_file/reports/2022-10/a924f47cae2629ecb5f8801629cf7fb8773e5444/3Q22EarningsRelease.pdf">$20.23 billion</a>), the foundry's best quarter to date. Otherwise, in terms of profitability, TSMC booked $7.59 billion in net income for the quarter, for a gross margin of 53.2%. This is a decent bit off of TSMC's record margin of 60.4% (Q3'22), and comes as the company is still in the process of further ramping its N3 (3nm-class) fab lines.</p>
<p>When it comes to wafer revenue share, the company's N3 process technologies (3nm-class) accounted for 15% of wafer revenue in Q2 (up from 9% in the previous quarter), N5 production nodes (4nm and 5nm-classes) commanded 35% of TSMC's earnings in the second quarter (down from 37% in Q1 2024), and N7 fabrication processes (6nm and 7nm-classes) accounted for 17% of the foundry's wafer revenue in the second quarter of 2024 (down from 19% in Q1 2024). Advanced technologies all together (N3, N5, N7) accounted for 67% of total wafer revenue.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21481/tsmcs-q2-results-best-quarter-ever-as-hpc-revenue-share-exceeds-52-on-ai-demand-"><img alt="" src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21481/2Q24-Presentation-%28E%29-5-nodes.png" style="width: 100%;" /></a></p>
<p>"Our business in the second quarter was supported by strong demand for our industry-leading 3nm and 5nm technologies, partially offset by continued smartphone seasonality," said Wendell Huang, Senior VP and Chief Financial Officer of TSMC. "Moving into third quarter 2024, we expect our business to be supported by strong smartphone and AI-related demand for our leading-edge process technologies."</p>
<p>TSMC usually starts ramping up production for Apple's fall products (e.g. iPhone) in the second quarter of the year, so it is not surprising that revenue share of N3 increased in Q2 of this year. Yet, keeping in mind that TSMC's revenue in general increased by 10.3% QoQ, the company's shipments of processors made on N5 and N7 nodes are showing resilience as demand for AI and HPC processors is high across the industry.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21481/tsmcs-q2-results-best-quarter-ever-as-hpc-revenue-share-exceeds-52-on-ai-demand-"><img alt="" src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21481/2Q24-Presentation-%28E%29-platform.png" style="width: 100%;" /></a></p>
<p>Speaking of TSMC's HPC sales, HPC platform sales accounted for 52% of TSMC's revenue for the first time in many years. The world's largest contract maker of chips produces many types of chips that get placed under the HPC umbrella, including AI processors, CPUs for client PCs, and system-on-chips (SoCs) for consoles, just to name a few. Yet, in this case TSMC attributes demand for AI processors as the main driver for its HPC success. </p>
<p>As for smartphone platform revenue, its share dropped to 33% as actual sales declined by 1% quarter-over-quarter. All other segments grew by 5% to 20%.</p>
<p>For the third quarter of 2024, TSMC expects revenue between US$22.4 billion and US$23.2 billion, with a gross profit margin of 53.5% to 55.5% and an operating profit margin of 42.5% to 44.5%. The company's sales are projected to be driven by strong demand for leading-edge process technologies as well as increased demand for AI and smartphones-related applications.</p>
</p> Semiconductors){kind=link}
![](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=https://compbuddey.blogspot.com/2024/08/tsmcs-q224-results-best-quarter-ever-as_2.html&media=https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_u2bJ-t2fwhCsm7cKf917eUgwj6AHn98aUqz30WQ2BFQVpE538aUDRN3xodUBY17rr4yzwBiXM9kXIG2c2Vb8AcE1Yp9ikDcSnQhB5_0K6yMJiJFAFW7UgbWX1vo0Yxs7S75OdPrqBYWGOPrxs&description=TSMCs Q2'24 Results: Best Quarter Ever as HPC Revenue Share Exceeds 52% on AI Demand <p align="center"><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21481/tsmcs-q2-results-best-quarter-ever-as-hpc-revenue-share-exceeds-52-on-ai-demand-"><img src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21481/tsmc-fab-678-407A7635_3_575px.jpg" alt="" /></a></p><p><p>Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. this week said its revenue for the second quarter 2024 reached $20.82 billion, making it the company's best quarter (at least in dollars) to date. TSMC's high-performance computing (HPC) platform revenue share exceeded 52% for the first time in many years due to demand for AI processors and rebound of the PC market.</p>
<p>TSMC earned <a href="https://investor.tsmc.com/english/encrypt/files/encrypt_file/reports/2024-07/a152eded224aa1b83fdf342ed71d4c42af013915/2Q24EarningsRelease.pdf">$20.82 billion</a> USD in revenue for the second quarter of 2024, a 32.8% year-over-year increase and a 10.3% increase from the previous quarter. Perhaps more remarkable, $20.82 billion is a higher result than the company posted Q3 2022 (<a href="https://investor.tsmc.com/english/encrypt/files/encrypt_file/reports/2022-10/a924f47cae2629ecb5f8801629cf7fb8773e5444/3Q22EarningsRelease.pdf">$20.23 billion</a>), the foundry's best quarter to date. Otherwise, in terms of profitability, TSMC booked $7.59 billion in net income for the quarter, for a gross margin of 53.2%. This is a decent bit off of TSMC's record margin of 60.4% (Q3'22), and comes as the company is still in the process of further ramping its N3 (3nm-class) fab lines.</p>
<p>When it comes to wafer revenue share, the company's N3 process technologies (3nm-class) accounted for 15% of wafer revenue in Q2 (up from 9% in the previous quarter), N5 production nodes (4nm and 5nm-classes) commanded 35% of TSMC's earnings in the second quarter (down from 37% in Q1 2024), and N7 fabrication processes (6nm and 7nm-classes) accounted for 17% of the foundry's wafer revenue in the second quarter of 2024 (down from 19% in Q1 2024). Advanced technologies all together (N3, N5, N7) accounted for 67% of total wafer revenue.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21481/tsmcs-q2-results-best-quarter-ever-as-hpc-revenue-share-exceeds-52-on-ai-demand-"><img alt="" src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21481/2Q24-Presentation-%28E%29-5-nodes.png" style="width: 100%;" /></a></p>
<p>"Our business in the second quarter was supported by strong demand for our industry-leading 3nm and 5nm technologies, partially offset by continued smartphone seasonality," said Wendell Huang, Senior VP and Chief Financial Officer of TSMC. "Moving into third quarter 2024, we expect our business to be supported by strong smartphone and AI-related demand for our leading-edge process technologies."</p>
<p>TSMC usually starts ramping up production for Apple's fall products (e.g. iPhone) in the second quarter of the year, so it is not surprising that revenue share of N3 increased in Q2 of this year. Yet, keeping in mind that TSMC's revenue in general increased by 10.3% QoQ, the company's shipments of processors made on N5 and N7 nodes are showing resilience as demand for AI and HPC processors is high across the industry.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21481/tsmcs-q2-results-best-quarter-ever-as-hpc-revenue-share-exceeds-52-on-ai-demand-"><img alt="" src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21481/2Q24-Presentation-%28E%29-platform.png" style="width: 100%;" /></a></p>
<p>Speaking of TSMC's HPC sales, HPC platform sales accounted for 52% of TSMC's revenue for the first time in many years. The world's largest contract maker of chips produces many types of chips that get placed under the HPC umbrella, including AI processors, CPUs for client PCs, and system-on-chips (SoCs) for consoles, just to name a few. Yet, in this case TSMC attributes demand for AI processors as the main driver for its HPC success. </p>
<p>As for smartphone platform revenue, its share dropped to 33% as actual sales declined by 1% quarter-over-quarter. All other segments grew by 5% to 20%.</p>
<p>For the third quarter of 2024, TSMC expects revenue between US$22.4 billion and US$23.2 billion, with a gross profit margin of 53.5% to 55.5% and an operating profit margin of 42.5% to 44.5%. The company's sales are projected to be driven by strong demand for leading-edge process technologies as well as increased demand for AI and smartphones-related applications.</p>
</p> Semiconductors){kind=link}
![](https://web.whatsapp.com/send?text=TSMCs Q2'24 Results: Best Quarter Ever as HPC Revenue Share Exceeds 52% on AI Demand <p align="center"><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21481/tsmcs-q2-results-best-quarter-ever-as-hpc-revenue-share-exceeds-52-on-ai-demand-"><img src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21481/tsmc-fab-678-407A7635_3_575px.jpg" alt="" /></a></p><p><p>Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. this week said its revenue for the second quarter 2024 reached $20.82 billion, making it the company's best quarter (at least in dollars) to date. TSMC's high-performance computing (HPC) platform revenue share exceeded 52% for the first time in many years due to demand for AI processors and rebound of the PC market.</p>
<p>TSMC earned <a href="https://investor.tsmc.com/english/encrypt/files/encrypt_file/reports/2024-07/a152eded224aa1b83fdf342ed71d4c42af013915/2Q24EarningsRelease.pdf">$20.82 billion</a> USD in revenue for the second quarter of 2024, a 32.8% year-over-year increase and a 10.3% increase from the previous quarter. Perhaps more remarkable, $20.82 billion is a higher result than the company posted Q3 2022 (<a href="https://investor.tsmc.com/english/encrypt/files/encrypt_file/reports/2022-10/a924f47cae2629ecb5f8801629cf7fb8773e5444/3Q22EarningsRelease.pdf">$20.23 billion</a>), the foundry's best quarter to date. Otherwise, in terms of profitability, TSMC booked $7.59 billion in net income for the quarter, for a gross margin of 53.2%. This is a decent bit off of TSMC's record margin of 60.4% (Q3'22), and comes as the company is still in the process of further ramping its N3 (3nm-class) fab lines.</p>
<p>When it comes to wafer revenue share, the company's N3 process technologies (3nm-class) accounted for 15% of wafer revenue in Q2 (up from 9% in the previous quarter), N5 production nodes (4nm and 5nm-classes) commanded 35% of TSMC's earnings in the second quarter (down from 37% in Q1 2024), and N7 fabrication processes (6nm and 7nm-classes) accounted for 17% of the foundry's wafer revenue in the second quarter of 2024 (down from 19% in Q1 2024). Advanced technologies all together (N3, N5, N7) accounted for 67% of total wafer revenue.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21481/tsmcs-q2-results-best-quarter-ever-as-hpc-revenue-share-exceeds-52-on-ai-demand-"><img alt="" src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21481/2Q24-Presentation-%28E%29-5-nodes.png" style="width: 100%;" /></a></p>
<p>"Our business in the second quarter was supported by strong demand for our industry-leading 3nm and 5nm technologies, partially offset by continued smartphone seasonality," said Wendell Huang, Senior VP and Chief Financial Officer of TSMC. "Moving into third quarter 2024, we expect our business to be supported by strong smartphone and AI-related demand for our leading-edge process technologies."</p>
<p>TSMC usually starts ramping up production for Apple's fall products (e.g. iPhone) in the second quarter of the year, so it is not surprising that revenue share of N3 increased in Q2 of this year. Yet, keeping in mind that TSMC's revenue in general increased by 10.3% QoQ, the company's shipments of processors made on N5 and N7 nodes are showing resilience as demand for AI and HPC processors is high across the industry.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21481/tsmcs-q2-results-best-quarter-ever-as-hpc-revenue-share-exceeds-52-on-ai-demand-"><img alt="" src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21481/2Q24-Presentation-%28E%29-platform.png" style="width: 100%;" /></a></p>
<p>Speaking of TSMC's HPC sales, HPC platform sales accounted for 52% of TSMC's revenue for the first time in many years. The world's largest contract maker of chips produces many types of chips that get placed under the HPC umbrella, including AI processors, CPUs for client PCs, and system-on-chips (SoCs) for consoles, just to name a few. Yet, in this case TSMC attributes demand for AI processors as the main driver for its HPC success. </p>
<p>As for smartphone platform revenue, its share dropped to 33% as actual sales declined by 1% quarter-over-quarter. All other segments grew by 5% to 20%.</p>
<p>For the third quarter of 2024, TSMC expects revenue between US$22.4 billion and US$23.2 billion, with a gross profit margin of 53.5% to 55.5% and an operating profit margin of 42.5% to 44.5%. The company's sales are projected to be driven by strong demand for leading-edge process technologies as well as increased demand for AI and smartphones-related applications.</p>
</p> Semiconductors | https://compbuddey.blogspot.com/2024/08/tsmcs-q224-results-best-quarter-ever-as_2.html){kind=link}
![](mailto:?subject=TSMCs Q2'24 Results: Best Quarter Ever as HPC Revenue Share Exceeds 52% on AI Demand <p align="center"><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21481/tsmcs-q2-results-best-quarter-ever-as-hpc-revenue-share-exceeds-52-on-ai-demand-"><img src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21481/tsmc-fab-678-407A7635_3_575px.jpg" alt="" /></a></p><p><p>Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. this week said its revenue for the second quarter 2024 reached $20.82 billion, making it the company's best quarter (at least in dollars) to date. TSMC's high-performance computing (HPC) platform revenue share exceeded 52% for the first time in many years due to demand for AI processors and rebound of the PC market.</p>
<p>TSMC earned <a href="https://investor.tsmc.com/english/encrypt/files/encrypt_file/reports/2024-07/a152eded224aa1b83fdf342ed71d4c42af013915/2Q24EarningsRelease.pdf">$20.82 billion</a> USD in revenue for the second quarter of 2024, a 32.8% year-over-year increase and a 10.3% increase from the previous quarter. Perhaps more remarkable, $20.82 billion is a higher result than the company posted Q3 2022 (<a href="https://investor.tsmc.com/english/encrypt/files/encrypt_file/reports/2022-10/a924f47cae2629ecb5f8801629cf7fb8773e5444/3Q22EarningsRelease.pdf">$20.23 billion</a>), the foundry's best quarter to date. Otherwise, in terms of profitability, TSMC booked $7.59 billion in net income for the quarter, for a gross margin of 53.2%. This is a decent bit off of TSMC's record margin of 60.4% (Q3'22), and comes as the company is still in the process of further ramping its N3 (3nm-class) fab lines.</p>
<p>When it comes to wafer revenue share, the company's N3 process technologies (3nm-class) accounted for 15% of wafer revenue in Q2 (up from 9% in the previous quarter), N5 production nodes (4nm and 5nm-classes) commanded 35% of TSMC's earnings in the second quarter (down from 37% in Q1 2024), and N7 fabrication processes (6nm and 7nm-classes) accounted for 17% of the foundry's wafer revenue in the second quarter of 2024 (down from 19% in Q1 2024). Advanced technologies all together (N3, N5, N7) accounted for 67% of total wafer revenue.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21481/tsmcs-q2-results-best-quarter-ever-as-hpc-revenue-share-exceeds-52-on-ai-demand-"><img alt="" src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21481/2Q24-Presentation-%28E%29-5-nodes.png" style="width: 100%;" /></a></p>
<p>"Our business in the second quarter was supported by strong demand for our industry-leading 3nm and 5nm technologies, partially offset by continued smartphone seasonality," said Wendell Huang, Senior VP and Chief Financial Officer of TSMC. "Moving into third quarter 2024, we expect our business to be supported by strong smartphone and AI-related demand for our leading-edge process technologies."</p>
<p>TSMC usually starts ramping up production for Apple's fall products (e.g. iPhone) in the second quarter of the year, so it is not surprising that revenue share of N3 increased in Q2 of this year. Yet, keeping in mind that TSMC's revenue in general increased by 10.3% QoQ, the company's shipments of processors made on N5 and N7 nodes are showing resilience as demand for AI and HPC processors is high across the industry.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21481/tsmcs-q2-results-best-quarter-ever-as-hpc-revenue-share-exceeds-52-on-ai-demand-"><img alt="" src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21481/2Q24-Presentation-%28E%29-platform.png" style="width: 100%;" /></a></p>
<p>Speaking of TSMC's HPC sales, HPC platform sales accounted for 52% of TSMC's revenue for the first time in many years. The world's largest contract maker of chips produces many types of chips that get placed under the HPC umbrella, including AI processors, CPUs for client PCs, and system-on-chips (SoCs) for consoles, just to name a few. Yet, in this case TSMC attributes demand for AI processors as the main driver for its HPC success. </p>
<p>As for smartphone platform revenue, its share dropped to 33% as actual sales declined by 1% quarter-over-quarter. All other segments grew by 5% to 20%.</p>
<p>For the third quarter of 2024, TSMC expects revenue between US$22.4 billion and US$23.2 billion, with a gross profit margin of 53.5% to 55.5% and an operating profit margin of 42.5% to 44.5%. The company's sales are projected to be driven by strong demand for leading-edge process technologies as well as increased demand for AI and smartphones-related applications.</p>
</p> Semiconductors&body=https://compbuddey.blogspot.com/2024/08/tsmcs-q224-results-best-quarter-ever-as_2.html){kind=link}
The Endorfy Fortis 5 Dual Fan CPU Cooler Review: Towering Value Standard CPU coolers, while adequate for managing basic thermal loads, often fall short in terms of noise reduction and superior cooling efficiency. This limitation drives advanced users and system builders to seek aftermarket solutions tailored to their specific needs. The high-end aftermarket cooler market is highly competitive, with manufacturers striving to offer products with exceptional performance.
Endorfy, previously known as SilentiumPC, is a Polish manufacturer that has undergone a significant transformation to expand its presence in global markets. The brand is known for delivering high-performance cooling solutions with a strong focus on balancing efficiency and affordability. By rebranding as Endorfy, the company aims to enter premium market segments while continuing to offer reliable, high-quality cooling products.
SilentiumPC became very popular in the value/mainstream segments of the PC market with their products, the spearhead of which probably was the Fera 5 cooler that we reviewed a little over two years ago and had a remarkable value for money. Today’s review places Endorfy’s largest CPU cooler, the Fortis 5 Dual Fan, on our laboratory test bench. The Fortis 5 is the largest CPU air cooler the company currently offers and is significantly more expensive than the Fera 5, yet it still is a single-tower cooler that strives to strike a balance between value, compatibility, and performance.
Cases/Cooling/PSUs
Kioxia Demonstrates Optical Interface SSDs for Data Centers 
A few years back, the Japanese government's New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO ) allocated funding for the development of green datacenter technologies. With the aim to obtain up to 40% savings in overall power consumption, several Japanese companies have been developing an optical interface for their enterprise SSDs. And at this year's FMS, Kioxia had their optical interface on display.
For this demonstration, Kioxia took its existing CM7 enterprise SSD and created an optical interface for it. A PCIe card with on-board optics developed by Kyocera is installed in the server slot. An optical interface allows data transfer over long distances (it was 40m in the demo, but Kioxia promises lengths of up to 100m for the cable in the future). This allows the storage to be kept in a separate room with minimal cooling requirements compared to the rack with the CPUs and GPUs. Disaggregation of different server components will become an option as very high throughput interfaces such as PCIe 7.0 (with 128 GT/s rates) become available.
The demonstration of the optical SSD showed a slight loss in IOPS performance, but a significant advantage in the latency metric over the shipping enterprise SSD behind a copper network link. Obviously, there are advantages in wiring requirements and signal integrity maintenance with optical links.
Being a proof-of-concept demonstration, we do see the requirement for an industry-standard approach if this were to gain adoption among different datacenter vendors. The PCI-SIG optical workgroup will need to get its act together soon to create a standards-based approach to this problem.
Storage
G.Skill Intros Low Latency DDR5 Memory Modules: CL30 at 6400 MT/s 
G.Skill on Tuesday introduced its ultra-low-latency DDR5-6400 memory modules that feature a CAS latency of 30 clocks, which appears to be the industry's most aggressive timings yet for DDR5-6400 sticks. The modules will be available for both AMD and Intel CPU-based systems.
With every new generation of DDR memory comes an increase in data transfer rates and an extension of relative latencies. While for the vast majority of applications, the increased bandwidth offsets the performance impact of higher timings, there are applications that favor low latencies. However, shrinking latencies is sometimes harder than increasing data transfer rates, which is why low-latency modules are rare.
Nonetheless, G.Skill has apparently managed to cherry-pick enough DDR5 memory chips and build appropriate printed circuit boards to produce DDR5-6400 modules with CL30 timings, which are substantially lower than the CL46 timings recommended by JEDEC for this speed bin. This means that while JEDEC-standard modules have an absolute latency of 14.375 ns, G.Skill's modules can boast a latency of just 9.375 ns – an approximately 35% decrease.
G.Skill's DDR5-6400 CL30 39-39-102 modules have a capacity of 16 GB and will be available in 32 GB dual-channel kits, though the company does not disclose voltages, which are likely considerably higher than those standardized by JEDEC.
The company plans to make its DDR5-6400 modules available both for AMD systems with EXPO profiles (Trident Z5 Neo RGB and Trident Z5 Royal Neo) and for Intel-powered PCs with XMP 3.0 profiles (Trident Z5 RGB and Trident Z5 Royal). For AMD AM5 systems that have a practical limitation of 6000 MT/s – 6400 MT/s for DDR5 memory (as this is roughly as fast as AMD's Infinity Fabric can operate at with a 1:1 ratio), the new modules will be particularly beneficial for AMD's Ryzen 7000 and Ryzen 9000-series processors.
G.Skill notes that since its modules are non-standard, they will not work with all systems but will operate on high-end motherboards with properly cooled CPUs.
The new ultra-low-latency memory kits will be available worldwide from G.Skill's partners starting in late August 2024. The company did not disclose the pricing of these modules, but since we are talking about premium products that boast unique specifications, they are likely to be priced accordingly.
Memory
G.Skill Intros Low Latency DDR5 Memory Modules: CL30 at 6400 MT/s
G.Skill on Tuesday introduced its ultra-low-latency DDR5-6400 memory modules that feature a CAS latency of 30 clocks, which appears to be the industry's most aggressive timings yet for DDR5-6400 sticks. The modules will be available for both AMD and Intel CPU-based systems.
With every new generation of DDR memory comes an increase in data transfer rates and an extension of relative latencies. While for the vast majority of applications, the increased bandwidth offsets the performance impact of higher timings, there are applications that favor low latencies. However, shrinking latencies is sometimes harder than increasing data transfer rates, which is why low-latency modules are rare.
Nonetheless, G.Skill has apparently managed to cherry-pick enough DDR5 memory chips and build appropriate printed circuit boards to produce DDR5-6400 modules with CL30 timings, which are substantially lower than the CL46 timings recommended by JEDEC for this speed bin. This means that while JEDEC-standard modules have an absolute latency of 14.375 ns, G.Skill's modules can boast a latency of just 9.375 ns – an approximately 35% decrease.
G.Skill's DDR5-6400 CL30 39-39-102 modules have a capacity of 16 GB and will be available in 32 GB dual-channel kits, though the company does not disclose voltages, which are likely considerably higher than those standardized by JEDEC.
The company plans to make its DDR5-6400 modules available both for AMD systems with EXPO profiles (Trident Z5 Neo RGB and Trident Z5 Royal Neo) and for Intel-powered PCs with XMP 3.0 profiles (Trident Z5 RGB and Trident Z5 Royal). For AMD AM5 systems that have a practical limitation of 6000 MT/s – 6400 MT/s for DDR5 memory (as this is roughly as fast as AMD's Infinity Fabric can operate at with a 1:1 ratio), the new modules will be particularly beneficial for AMD's Ryzen 7000 and Ryzen 9000-series processors.
G.Skill notes that since its modules are non-standard, they will not work with all systems but will operate on high-end motherboards with properly cooled CPUs.
The new ultra-low-latency memory kits will be available worldwide from G.Skill's partners starting in late August 2024. The company did not disclose the pricing of these modules, but since we are talking about premium products that boast unique specifications, they are likely to be priced accordingly.
Memory
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The Endorfy Fortis 5 Dual Fan CPU Cooler Review: Towering Value Standard CPU coolers, while adequate for managing basic thermal loads, often fall short in terms of noise reduction and superior cooling efficiency. This limitation drives advanced users and system builders to seek aftermarket solutions tailored to their specific needs. The high-end aftermarket cooler market is highly competitive, with manufacturers striving to offer products with exceptional performance.
Endorfy, previously known as SilentiumPC, is a Polish manufacturer that has undergone a significant transformation to expand its presence in global markets. The brand is known for delivering high-performance cooling solutions with a strong focus on balancing efficiency and affordability. By rebranding as Endorfy, the company aims to enter premium market segments while continuing to offer reliable, high-quality cooling products.
SilentiumPC became very popular in the value/mainstream segments of the PC market with their products, the spearhead of which probably was the Fera 5 cooler that we reviewed a little over two years ago and had a remarkable value for money. Today’s review places Endorfy’s largest CPU cooler, the Fortis 5 Dual Fan, on our laboratory test bench. The Fortis 5 is the largest CPU air cooler the company currently offers and is significantly more expensive than the Fera 5, yet it still is a single-tower cooler that strives to strike a balance between value, compatibility, and performance.
Cases/Cooling/PSUs
Intel Sells Its Arm Shares, Reduces Stakes in Other Companies
Intel has divested its entire stake in Arm Holdings during the second quarter, raising approximately $147 million. Alongside this, Intel sold its stake in cybersecurity firm ZeroFox and reduced its holdings in Astera Labs, all as part of a broader effort to manage costs and recover cash amid significant financial challenges.
The sale of Intel's 1.18 million shares in Arm Holdings, as reported in a recent SEC filing, comes at a time when the company is struggling with substantial financial losses. Despite the $147 million generated from the sale, Intel reported a $120 million net loss on its equity investments for the quarter, which is a part of a larger $1.6 billion loss that Intel faced during this period.
In addition to selling its stake in Arm, Intel also exited its investment in ZeroFox and reduced its involvement with Astera Labs, a company known for developing connectivity platforms for enterprise hardware. These moves are in line with Intel's strategy to reduce costs and stabilize its financial position as it faces ongoing market challenges.
Despite the divestment, Intel's past investment in Arm was likely driven by strategic considerations. Arm Holdings is a significant force in the semiconductor industry, with its designs powering most mobile devices, and, for obvious reasons, Intel would like to address these. Intel and Arm are also collaborating on datacenter platforms tailored for Intel's 18A process technology. Additionally, Arm might view Intel as a potential licensee for its technologies and a valuable partner for other companies that license Arm's designs.
Intel's investment in Astera Labs was also a strategic one as the company probably wanted to secure steady supply of smart retimers, smart cable modems, and CXL memory controller, which are used in volumes in datacenters and Intel is certainly interested in selling as many datacenter CPUs as possible.
Intel's financial struggles were highlighted earlier this month when the company released a disappointing earnings report, which led to a 33% drop in its stock value, erasing billions of dollars of capitalization. To counter these difficulties, Intel announced plans to cut 15,000 jobs and implement other expense reductions. The company has also suspended its dividend, signaling the depth of its efforts to conserve cash and focus on recovery. When it comes to divestment of Arm stock, the need for immediate financial stabilization has presumably taken precedence, leading to the decision.
CPUs
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