Apple-supplier TSMC continues to move right along with its manufacturing processes. The Taiwan-based high-end chip foundry maintains that its 3nm fab project remains on schedule, ready for risk production in 2021 followed by volume production in the second half of 2022.
TSMC has already entered volume production for 5nm node, and it is reportedly developing variants for the 5nm process… including a further enhanced 5nm node in addition to 5nm Plus, according to sources at IC inspection services companies and chipmaking materials suppliers.
Malcolm Owen for AppleInsider:
If accurate, and based on typical iPhone production schedules, this could lead to the Apple-designed A15 at the absolute earliest or more realistically, the A16 chip in 2022 using the process. It is thought Apple is using TSMC’s 5nm processes to create the next generation of A-series chips destined for the “iPhone 12” tentatively titled the “A14,” with production scheduled for mid-2020. In April, it was reported Apple increased its chip order for the fourth quarter of 2020, potentially due to an anticipated higher demand for the annual iPhone refresh.
TSMC is also intending to move some of its chip production to the United States, in a factory in Arizona thought to cost $12 billion… with construction commencing in 2021 and chip production expected to start in 2024… [offering] the prospect of some A-series chips being made on U.S. soil.
MacDailyNews Take: Amazingly, the reductions in silicon transistors keep on coming in regular intervals:
Semiconductor device fabrication
MOSFET scaling (process nodes)
10 µm – 1971
6 µm – 1974
3 µm – 1977
1.5 µm – 1981
1 µm – 1984
800 nm – 1987
600 nm – 1990
350 nm – 1993
250 nm – 1996
180 nm – 1999
130 nm – 2001
90 nm – 2003
65 nm – 2005
45 nm – 2007
32 nm – 2009
22 nm – 2012
14 nm – 2014
10 nm – 2016
7 nm – 2018
5 nm – ~2020
3 nm – ~2022
µm – micrometer (one millionth of a meter)
nm – nanometer (one billionth of a meter)