The world’s largest chipmaker TSMC has said it will produce 3nm chips this year and launch 2nm technology in around 2025. The Taiwanese semiconductor said it will unveil the 3nm chips in the second half of 2022.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) announced its work on revolutionary chip technology at its 2022 TSMC Technology Symposium.
The company also announced it will start implementing the GAA FET (Gate All Around Field-Effect Transistors) technology with its N2 (2nm class) chips. This innovation is likely to bring major performance improvements in power efficiency in chips.
3nm nodes in five tiers
TSMC will launch a total of five 3nm nodes in five tiers. These will be N3, N3E (3nm Enhanced), N3P (3nm Performance Enhanced), N3S (3nm Density Enhanced), and N3X (3nm Ultra High Performance). Each process will bring better performance, higher transistor density, and power efficiency.
Meanwhile, all the 3nm processes will use the company’s FinFlex technology. It helps chip designers place the blocks more precisely for better performance and efficiency.
The 2nm node will boost the performance by 10% to 15% at the same power use. On the other hand, it will drive down power consumption by 20% to 30% at the same frequency and transistor count in comparison to the N3E node.
The company says N2 improves chip density over N3E by 1.1x.
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Competing with Samsung
TSMC is the biggest rival of Samsung but the latter has not been yet able to stand up to the competition. However, the South Korean company seems to have taken one key advantage here. Unlike TSMC, Samsung has announced it will use GAA FET this year in its 3nm chips this year. The Taiwanese company will use it in its 2nm chips that will arrive in 2025. It also means TSMC’s 3nm chips won’t use this innovation.
GAA FET is a new technology in the chip-making industry that is said to bring major efficiency improvements.
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Companies like Apple, Qualcomm, Nvidia, and MediaTek would be divided in choosing advanced processes of chip-making between TSM and Samsung.
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