TSMC’s vice president of pathfinding and corporate research, Dr. Min Cao, believes that the demand for artificial intelligence chips will push the global semiconductor industry’s revenue to $1 trillion in 2030. Dr. Cao made the remarks in Taipei, Taiwan, during the IMEC’s ITF Taiwan technology forum. During his talk, the TSMC executive shared that since his firm was set up in 1987, a new wave of technology has emerged every decade or so.

These waves, which cover personal computers, smartphones and automobiles have increased the revenue base. According to him, the latest technology wave is for artificial intelligence chips, which stands to drive the demand for high performance computing (HPC) chips to new highs.

HPC Chips To Drive Demand For AI Products Says TSMC VP

During his talk, the TSMC executive shared that the three major technologies that are driving the artificial intelligence industry today are advanced packaging, advanced logic technology and advanced memory. All three of these technologies are key to make AI chips, as while logic technology is responsible for fabricating the AI processors, memory chips work along with the processors to enable them to compute large data volumes while packaging is required to assemble the chips into a final usable form.

The TSMC executive, who started his career at the firm in 2002 and has worked on process technologies starting from 90 nanometers and ending at 10 nanometers, added that the semiconductor industry should cumulatively earn $600 billion in revenue in 2024. He added that the industry forms the bedrock of modern day life as chips are used across cars, medical devices, 5G communications, artificial intelligence, high performance computing and other applications.

The TSMC official added that from the 2024 $600 billion revenue estimate, the semiconductor market’s total size can grow to sit at $1 trillion by 2030. Wall Street’s bullishness for the demand of artificial intelligence products has pushed GPU designer NVIDIA’s shares to a record high this year. However, the stock has lost roughly 20% since its June high, which saw NVIDIA become the most valuable company in the world as investors continue to flirt with the potential of AI and the risks of high costs and poor monetization in an uncertain economic environment.

Dr. Cao’s $1 trillion estimate includes the demand for AI products, smartphones, automobile chips and Internet of Things (IoT) gadgets in the order of size. He believes that high performance computing products, which also include AI chips, will account for 40% of the semiconductor industry’s $1 trillion revenue in 2030.

TSMC’s revenue for the first and second quarters of 2024 is $39.78 billion. During Q2, not only did HPC products account for 52% of the firm’s revenue, but they were also the fastest growing segment via a sequential growth rate of 28%. In the first quarter, HPC accounted for 46% of TSMC’s revenue, gaining two percentage points in share over Q1 2023’s 44% share.

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