Apple closely follows the technical advances of its partner TSMC. We thus learn that the firm has already started the design of its chips based on the Taiwanese founder’s future 2nm engraving process.
At least that’s what we learn from a heavily redacted slide shared on LinkedIn by an Apple engineer and captured by a Korean site. On this sheet, the employee in question lists the projects on which he has worked on behalf of the Californian giant… and on which he is currently busy. We then discover that the person concerned is “ working on TS2nm », name probably given internally, at Apple, to the architecture exploiting TSMC’s 2nm engraving.
2nm at TSMC? Not before 2025… but Apple would be in the starting blocks
According to the latest available information, TSMC would however not be able to exploit its 2nm engraving process on a large scale before the second half of 2025, at best. In this case, Apple’s development of a processor capable of taking advantage of it would therefore be, at least, a year and a half ahead of schedule. For the firm, however, the idea would be to be able to take advantage of TSMC’s new engraving as soon as it is ready from an industrial point of view. It is also estimated that Apple would be (as was the case with the 3 nm process last year), the first manufacturer on the market to exploit this new engraving finesse for its products.
As a reminder, TSMC’s 2nm engraving process is supposed to enable the manufacturing of processors 10 to 15% faster than current 3nm chips, at the same consumption; or to reduce the consumption of these future processors by 25 to 30%, this time at a speed equal to 3 nm. We also know that TSMC is currently building two new factories dedicated to the production of processors engraved in 2 nm, and that a third could be started soon. Enough to enable mass production and avoid shortages.
At the same time, certain rumors suggest that the firm is already working on the development of a 1.4 nm engraving process, all for entry into production from 2027. A technical advance which Apple would also like to have the scoop. It is rumored that the firm is already considering reserving TSMC’s initial production capacities in 1.4 nm, or even 1 nm. If you want to have a scale of size, tell yourself that a human hair measures between 70,000 and 80,000 nm in diameter.