“Apple’s chip manufacturer TSMC today broke ground on its first 5-nanometer fabrication facility in Taiwan, promising that 5-nanometer chips will be commercially available in 2020, with 3-nanometer chips planned for 2022,” Jeremy Horwitz reports for VentureBeat.
“The tiny new processors will guarantee that future smartphones continue to shrink while offering superior performance and battery life to today’s models,” Horwitz reports. “First shown in physical form by IBM and Samsung last June, the 5-nanometer chip process is capable of squeezing 30 billion transistors — digital on-off switches — into fingernail-sized chips, doubling or tripling the transistor counts of 10-nanometer chips.”
“A 5-nanometer chip might be four times as power-efficient as a 10-nanometer chip while offering the same performance, or four times as fast with the same battery life. Vendors commonly choose something in the middle, such as twice the speed of a prior chip with half the battery drain,” Horwitz reports. “[TSMC] is investing over $17 billion in the factory and $24 billion in 5-nanometer technology as a whole, with plans to fabricate 3-nanometer chips in the same location.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: 5nm? 3nm?! Holy shrinkage, Batman!
Apple’s future A-Series chips are going to be technological wonders to behold, that much is sure.
5nm by 2020 and 2nm by 2022 – hey, we’ll drink to that! Interns, TTK. TGIF and cheers, everybody!