We might see the first 3nm Apple chips as early as 2022

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Apple’s main chip manufacturer, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (or TSMC for short), is expected to start the mass production of their 3nm chips - despite many analysts claiming that 3nm chips are not physically possible to make. They expect to start production around the second half of 2022 if everything goes as planned; and they’ll need to increase the number of employees from 15,000 to 20,000 in order to achieve the production of 55,000 pieces per month.

Earlier this year in August, TSMC’s senior vice president Mi Yujie announced their plan to do more node improvements until N3 - which is expected to be the most advanced node in 2022.

Let’s talk about the improvements by comparing N3 to the current N5:

• Performance is improved by 1.1-1.15 times
• Power consumption is reduced by 1.25-1.3 times

Here are the improvements compared to the 7nm process:

• Performance is improved by 1.25-1.35 times
• Power consumption is reduced by 1.55-1.6 times

We have to keep in mind that these comparisons asume an “idealized transistor” which does not always match up with real-life products such as the ones from AMD, Intel or Apple. After looking at these numbers, the benefits seem to be relatively small compared to previous manufacturing processes - but nonetheless, these are still definitely welcome additions. After all, transistor size is just one part of the equation, with improvements in chip design, manufacturing processes, hardware accelerators and better cooling techniques also playing a huge role when developing well performing chips. We expect to have more information on the way about this new chapter in silicon manufacturing technology. With TSMC’s closest rival Samsung also vying to be the first one to mass produce a 3nm chip, things are certainly heating up. We’ll be covering them all so stay tuned for more!

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Published to Apple Scoop on 29th November, 2020.