If all goes according to plan, TSMC will be the first manufacturer to complete a 3nm manufacturing process that will unlock a new level of speed and efficiency in devices . It is expected to far outperform the current 4nm process used by the best processors on the market, such as the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1.
TSMC is currently working on three 3nm nodes: N3, N3B and N3E . The first of them will be released next year, while the older brother of the family (the N3E) will be ready for 2024. There is no information about the N3B, but it is known that in terms of power it is an intermediate step between the N3 and the N3E.
Now, the media Wccftech has leaked a report from Morgan Stanley where it is ensured that the production performance of the N3E node has been higher than expected and they will advance the production schedule of this node by one quarter . It could start its volume production during the second quarter of 2023 instead of the third quarter.
Improved 3nm chips will be a reality sooner rather than later
TSMC’s N3E node improves on the N3 mainly in its logical density which is 8% lower and uses 4 fewer EUV layers . This would facilitate and speed up the manufacture of wafers and, in part, would solve the situation of shortage of chips that has existed since the beginning of the pandemic. Compared to the current 5nm process used by TSMC, the new N3E node offers 60% more density, so the jump in performance is expected to be large .
However, bringing the production of the N3E mode forward by a quarter does not affect the production of the original 3nm N3 chips . TSMC is expected to start production of the N3 node from the third quarter of this year and deliver them to customers in the first quarter of 2023. Mind you, the chips made with TSMC’s N3 and N3E nodes are not expected to go on the market until the third or fourth quarter of 2023 .
The important thing is that the design of the N3E node will end this March and, if everything continues to go well, we will not have to wait that long to witness the new leap in power that will reach mobile phones, tablets and computers. Remember that TSMC manufactures the semiconductors used by various industry giants, such as Qualcomm, MediaTek, AMD, NVIDIA, and Apple .
Source | Phone Arena
