It seems crazy to think that we’re down to 3nm production already, but according to TSMC, that’s exactly what they’ll be doing this year. A far cry from the 250nm production of the first desktop CPU I ever purchased, a Pentium II 400. However, in their first-quarter earnings call, TSMC said that the next-generation nodes will be going into production later this year. Furthermore, they’ll be pushing to get 2nm going by the end of 2025.
TSMC
When asked about their timeline for the nm node they responded that “N2 development is on track” and that “…we are confident that N2 will continue our technology leadership to support customer growth. And we still plan the production in 2025.” Also, it seems TSMC will be the N2 will be their first process to use GAA (gate all around) transistor technology instead of the common FinFET (fin field-effect transistors) design. Samsung has already started using their version of GAA, and Intel is working to deploy something similar in the coming year or so. Unfortunately, that’s all we know about this at the time.
Later this year, TSMC will put their N3 process into production. As this rolls out, they’ll then move this to the N3E process, which will be their “enhanced performance, power, and yield” version of N3. The foundry’s total revenue grew by 11.6% quarter on quarter to $17.6 billion, and it looks on track to repeat that again.
Either way, it looks like the next few years of chip designs at TSMC are well taken care of, and I can’t wait to see what comes out of it all!
