Samsung was the first to draw on the mass production of chips in 3 nanometers (nm). Now TSMC is descending into the arena.
There is now a new challenger with the ability to mass-produce chips with transistors no larger than 3 nanometers: TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company). The Taiwanese industrialist must indeed hold a small ceremony on December 29 to mark the occasion, according to sources consulted by DigiTimes on the 26th.
The era of 3 nanometer chips is coming
3 nanometer (nm) chips are the new horizon of the high-tech industry in the short and medium term. Today, there are hardly any companies in the world that can manufacture components with such fine etching on an industrial scale. Samsung was the first to launch this summer. Now it’s TSMC’s turn to take the plunge.
It is difficult to grasp the scale in which such small transistors evolve. A nanometer is one billionth of a meter. It’s tiny. Ridiculous. In comparison, a hair is 50,000 times thicker. It would be huge next to TSMC’s transistor. But it is of a size close to the transistors that equip the most advanced chips, in 5 and 7 nm.
In fact, the evolution of the transistors is done at the level of their geometry, more on their size, which it becomes more and more difficult to lower. Thus, manufacturers have begun to abandon a “flat” approach for a “three-dimensional” logic. These modifications in the structure could be observed from 2010 and the chips in 22 then 14 nm.
A first level has been reached with the so-called FinFET technology (fin field-effect transistor, or finned field-effect transistor). This process was used for 22, 14, 10 and 7 nm transistors. Then came the “GAAFET” (gate-all-around) method to pass the milestone of 7 and 5 nm. The GAAFET surrounds the transistor with a sort of portal.
Today, TSMC already produces 5 nm chips on behalf of Apple, through the Apple A16 Bionic chip. This is found in the most advanced smartphones of the American brand, namely the iPhone 14 Pro and the iPhone 14 Pro Max. We can think that the new generation of 3 nm transistors will equip the future products of the Cupertino company in 2023.