Kevin Zhang, Senior Vice President of TSMC, stated that the investment amount reached 5.4 billion dollars in the 2022 fiscal year and emphasized that they are in a rapid growth. Besides financial success, TSMC's production technologies were positioned at the center of the conference. In addition to the company's N5P, N4 and N4P processes, it was reported that the new N4X (5nm) process offers a 14 percent performance increase and 6 percent higher chip density compared to the first generation N5 (5nm) .
TSMC details 3nm techniques
As for 3nm , TSMC reiterated that mass production has begun since the beginning of 2022. However, the updated N3E process has reached technical certification and will be commercially available in the second half of 2023 . In addition, the N3P process, one of the advanced versions in the 3nm family , will enter production by 2024 and will bring 5 percent better performance, 5-10 percent lower power consumption and 1.04 times higher chip density than N3E. Due to the high demand from the automotive industry, TSMC has introduced an N3AE based on the N3 process but modified for applications such as autonomous driving.will introduce the process. Chips produced with this technique will be offered to companies as a test product.
Finally, the company talked about the ongoing 2nm process, which is expected to go into production by 2025. TSMC will switch to nanosheet technology, abandoning FinFET transistors mainly due to the difference in performance efficiency . The company claims that 2nm chips will provide 10-15 percent higher performance at the same power consumption and ambitious low power consumption of 25-30 percent at the same speeds. It is expected that TSMC's 2nm chips will be used by Apple first , just like 3nm .
