Taiwanese giant TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.) recently said it is ready to start production on its 3nm (N3) process node. At present, the company has not yet revealed which companies will use this new technology, but, most likely, Apple will be the first customer to order N3 chips for its upcoming iPhones and other devices.
Compared to node N5, which joined HVM in 2020, the new first generation N3 should offer a performance improvement of 10-15% (with the same power and complexity) against a reduction in consumption of 25-30% (with the same speed and number of transistors), as well as an increase in logic density of about 1.6 times. Node N3 will make use of FinFlex technology, which has been able to improve chip design flexibility, simplifying the whole process.
C.C. Wei, CEO of TSMC, according to what was reported by Nikkei colleagues, confirmed that "soon" will begin the production in large volumes of chips based on the 3N node. In the past, some rumors had indicated the month of September as a possible starting period, but this is the first time that the company has officially spoken about the start of HVM (High Volume Manufacturing) production.
Photo credit: TSMC| ); } Photo credit: TSMC In the future, TSMC will offer even more advanced 3nm nodes, such as N3E, N3P (aiming to maximize performance), N3S (with higher transistor density) and N3X for further optimization for applications such as CPU. Thanks to FinFlex, companies that design particularly complex System-On-Chips, such as Apple, Intel, AMD, MediaTek and NVIDIA, will be able to make their chips more streamlined.
Yesterday, we had you TSMC reported that the end of the chip shortage is nowhere near as the foundry is currently unable to meet the demand for low-cost products, even used in the same manufacturing machinery. For more details on this, we advise you to read our previous dedicated article.