TSMC’s 3nm process to enter mass production from 2H 2022

The Taiwanese semiconductor giant aka TSMC has been the pioneer in the silicon industry with an efficient manufacturing process and obviously its innovation in the field that has gained trust from its wide range of clients including Qualcomm, Apple, NVIDIA, AMD, MediaTek, and others.

Not only TSMC pioneered its N7 and N5 process nodes, now its ready to showcase the power of its future N3 node. At its annual Technology Symposium, the Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturer gave the complete characteristics of its future 3nm process node as well.

TSMC also laid out a roadmap for the 5nm successors in the form of N5P and N4 process nodes. Currently, if you are aware, TSMC is shipping N5 or 5nm nodes to its worldwide clients, so the next set of innovative chips will be using TSMC’s tech for better performance and efficiency.

N5 & N5P

TSMC’s N5 process node represents its 2^nd generation deep-ultraviolet (DUV) and extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) process node.

The company said N5 currently is progressing with defect densities one quarter ahead of its previous-gen N7. Also, the new node has better yields at the time of mass production than their predecessors i.e. N7 and N10 (7nm and 10nm).

The projected defect density is also supposed to keep improving when compared to previous generations. Beyond N5, TSMC is planning to make the N5P node which still uses the current N5 process however with more improvements.

The Taiwanese foundry expects the upcoming N5P process node to have 5% performance gain and a 10% power reduction as compared to the current 5nm process.

N4

Most of us were confused about whether TSMC will be opting for the 4nm process or not. Previously, some officials did confess that it plans N4 but never made it public, however now, N4 node is in TSMC’s plans publically.

The N4 node brings further evolution from the N5 process, engaging further EUV layers to reduce masks. So, the N4 will enter risk production in 4Q21 while for volume production TSMC plans later in 2022.

N3

One of the most exciting disclosure is got to be the N3 node or 3nm process which TSMC has been working on for a long time now along with its rival Samsung. TSMC will be sticking with its FinFET transistors for N3, relying on “innovative features” to enable them to achieve the full-node scaling as pointed out by Anandtech.

If raw performance and efficiency are to be considered, the N3 node promises to give better performance by 10-15% than the N5 at the same power levels or plans to reduce the power draw by 25-30% at the same transistor speeds. 

TSMC plans to start N3 node risk production in 2021 while entering volume production by 2H 2022.

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