TSMC, the chip maker for the iPhone, has announced that it will start manufacturing 2nm chips by 2025. This is the first time the manufacturer has announced when it is going to release its cutting-edge new chips, as Samsung and Intel have made similar announcements.
According to Nikkei Asia, TSMC made the announcement at an in-person event, and this is the first time that an iPhone chipmaker has specifically set a production schedule for its 2nm chips.
The Taiwanese chip titan said its 2nm process will be based on a “nanosheet transistor architecture” that will provide significant performance and power efficiency improvements. The nanosheet architecture is a completely different infrastructure than the Finfet infrastructure used for 5nm chips, which is currently the most advanced on the market. Such new technologies require huge investments to make them available.
Recently reported that while Apple is using 5nm TSMC chips in its iPhones and Macs, the company is pushing for the chipmaker to release a 3nm processor for Macs as early as 2023.
Apple also recently announced its new M2 chip for Mac, which is based on the A15 Bionic series and still uses the same 5nm design. According to our previous review, this 3nm processor can have “up to four dies, for a total of 40 processor cores per chip. Three versions of the third-generation chip are reported to be codenamed “Ibiza”, “Lobos” and “Palma”.
Nikkei Asia talked about the importance of the iPhone manufacturer’s announcement not only for Apple, but also for TSMC itself.
Intel has promised to regain leadership in chip manufacturing by 2025. The company first revealed its 1.8nm technology, which it calls 18A technology, in mid-2021. This year, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said the technology was “six months ahead of schedule” and pushed back the schedule until the end of 2024.
In April, Samsung said it would begin production of 3nm chips by the end of June this year.
Making smaller chips is very difficult because TSMC needs to cram more transistors into a tiny processor. By doing this, the iPhone chip maker is helping Apple save space for other technologies in its products and, of course, for larger batteries.
Reading now
The post iPhone chip maker to start production of 2nm processors by 2025 appeared first on Gamingsym.