Huawei Ascend Production Ramp: Die Banks, TSMC Continued Production, HBM is The Bottleneck

SemiAnalysis · 10 months ago

Huawei is ramping production of Ascend AI chips, shipping 507k units in 2024 and 805k in 2025, with a stockpile of 2.9 million die from TSMC carrying production through 2025 while SMIC scales its own manufacturing. SMIC will require only 20k wafers per month by end of 2025 to produce millions of Ascend die monthly, with capacity potentially reaching 60k-80k wafers per month for advanced nodes. As the TSMC die bank depletes within nine months and SMIC capacity matures, Huawei's vertical integration of chip design, fabrication, and tooling will enable China to reduce dependence on foreign semiconductor supply for AI infrastructure.