At the TSMC Technology Forum held today (August 8), TSMC President Wei Zhejia explained that the 30nm process has entered its third year of mass production, with a total of more than 5 million 200-inch wafers produced. He also revealed that the 12nm process will enter mass production in the second half of this year and will continue to use the FinFET architecture design, but the 3nm process will switch to a nanosheet transistor design, with mass production expected to begin in 2.
In the previous description，2nm製程相比3nm製程可在相同功耗下提高10-15%執行效能，而在相同效能下則可降低25-30%功耗。
The 2nm process technology uses a nanosheet transistor design, which will replace the fin field-effect transistor (FinFET) design that has been used for many years. It can also be combined with a chiplet design to meet the needs of mobile device computing and high-performance computing processor design.
TSMC's 3nm process technology, which will enter mass production in the second half of this year and integrate the new FINLEX architecture, will also allow designers greater flexibility in chip design, enabling them to target ultra-high-performance computing, prioritize power efficiency, and achieve a balance between the two. TSMC anticipates that the 3nm process will be available for a longer period of time to meet the needs of a wider market.
Regarding competitor Samsung's recent entry into 3nm process mass production, Wei Zhejia emphasized that TSMC still maintains stable and consistent production capacity, and will never design its own products. Therefore, unlike its competitors, it will not only provide foundry production services but also produce its own processors and other process technology application products.
According to TSMC's position, it emphasizes that it will only use its own process technology to assist customers in completing the production of semiconductor products, and emphasizes that it will continue to cooperate with companies such as MediaTek.
Currently, chip manufacturers including MediaTek, AMD, NVIDIA, and Qualcomm continue to maintain in-depth cooperation with TSMC. Apple is also a long-term cooperative customer of TSMC. However, due to the impact of the 3nm process technology entering mass production schedule, the A14 Bionic processor to be used in the iPhone 16 series will still be produced with the 5nm process, which is an improvement of the 4nm process.
