TSMC seems invincible. What was barely 10 years ago a dream for the company is today as palpable a reality as its biggest rival needs its services due to various delays which will cost it too much. As we are well aware, the latest rumors claimed that TSMC it was going to delay its 3nm due to undisclosed issues, but apparently that ultimately won’t happen, as everything seems to have been channeled to such an extent that it will arrive sooner than expected.
TSMC goes on the accelerator and leaves almost the entire lithography industry behind
Only 6 months ago, the worst was expected and today the rumors are totally contrary to those of this date. It is not known how or where the failure occurred, but the truth is that the company has already announced that everything related to the latest lithographic process with FinFET transistors is getting louder and louder, so much so that the rumor has just jumped the first: TSMC will begin mass production of its 3nm in the second half of this year.
While this is great news for companies like Apple, the truth is that this is small-scale mass production to prepare for landing already in 2022 with quite interesting production for its customers: 30,000 wafers per month.
Not happy, the figure will rise to 105,000 wafers in 2023, when ASML will have included more scanner units in its catalog as well as new models with higher throughput per hour. To put the numbers in context, TSMC’s current 5nm is currently being produced at a rate of 90,000 platelets per month.
Apple, AMD and Intel on the lookout for TSMC’s 3nm
The TSMC figures for these 3 nm are absolutely brutal compared to the current 5 nm: + 70% in density, + 11% in performance or -27% reduction in consumption at the same performance. Therefore, the company claims that the true successor to the 7nm that AMD is integrating is this 3nm node.
Apple will surely be the first company to use them and show us how far they can go with ARM as a key architecture, but, although AMD is coming later due to the complexity of its processors and the necessary masks that come with it, Intel will not be left out. behind.
The novelty is that the blue team will only be able to compete with its 3nm with its 7nm EUV, which also experienced delays and are currently unknown. Therefore, it is said that Intel will also outsource the production of some processors of this 3nm node from TSMC. The direct rival of this lithographic process will arrive from Korea with Samsung, which would have its 3nm ready with GAA transistors, so it will be very interesting to know which of them wins.
