TSMC announces that its next-gen 2nm mass production will begin in 2025

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is moving forward with its 2nm process node technology, now that it has nailed the 4nm node for NVIDIA and its new Hopper H100 GPUs, 3nm is coming and 2nm. .. starts soon.

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TSMC’s New 2nm Process Technology Expected in 2025

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TSMC is currently developing its 3nm process node technology, which Apple will use for its next-generation SoC inside the iPhone 15 in 2023. TSMC is currently manufacturing Hopper GPU wafers for NVIDIA, with the Hopper H100 being made on TSMC’s new 4N. process technology, with TSMC’s 4nm process node optimized and designed exclusively for Hopper H100.

After that comes 3nm for various models, including Apple, which we’ll see in iPhones and their upcoming AR/VR headset in 2023 and beyond. Once 3nm is in products and used worldwide, TSMC has its future technology 2nm process node technology, which the Taiwanese giant says will go into mass production in 2025.

New details about TSMC’s upcoming 3nm process node come from TSMC’s Senior Vice President for Research & Development and Technology, Dr. YJ Mii, then reported by United Daily News (UDN). TSMC needs some of the most advanced chipmaking machines in the world to beat its competitors in chipmaking at the world’s major process nodes.

TSMC has been picking up EUV (Extreme Ultra-Violet) machines for a few years now, where I’ve been reporting on them since June 2020. At the time, TSMC was committing $16 billion to an R&D fund that was pushing towards 5nm slated for production in volume at the end of 2020, trial productions of 3 nm from the first half of 2021 and mass production in 2022.

In June 2020, it was reported that TSMC’s next-gen 2nm process node was only in “development stages”, but it looks like we’re now getting closer to reality: 2025. In the last few days of 2021, I wrote a story of TSMC’s new 2nm facility costing more than T$1 trillion and that TSMC boss CC Wei met with Taichung city government officials for the new facility.

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Dr. YJ Mii during his keynote speech at TSMC’s 2021 Online Technology Symposium

But now we have Dr. Mii explaining that TSMC needs even more advanced machinery for the next phase of semiconductor manufacturing with 2nm. TSMC says it needs new high-NA “numerical aperture” machines, which the Taiwanese giant will secure in 2024, after which it will launch mass production of its 2nm process node in 2025.

TSMC will have the new “high NA” machines in 2024 but it will not start mass production of 2nm immediately, another TSMC executive confirmed that the company will start the research and development phase, as well as the collaboration process with partners before it changes. is embarking on mass production of its super-advanced 2nm node.

Dutch company ASML is the only company in the world to manufacture “high NA” machines, which makes it all the more difficult for TSMC to continue to dominate.

Now… let’s talk about performance and what we can expect from the 2nm Advanced Process Node. If we compare the next N5 process node, it is 30% more energy efficient while delivering 15% more performance. The next N3 process node offers 25-30% more power efficiency while delivering 10-15% more performance.