Tuesday, November 9th 2021
TSMC 3 nm To Enter Volume Production in 2022
TSMC will commercialize its N3 (3 nm) EUV silicon fabrication node in 2022, with volume production set to commence in the second half of the year. The company is looking to maximize capacity on its current N5 (5 nm) node, which already serves major customers such as Apple. AMD is expected to utilize N5 allocation going into 2022 as its next-generation "Zen 4" processors are expected to leverage the node to drive up CPU core counts and caches. The company is also utilizing N6 (6 nm) for its CDNA2 compute accelerator logic dies. N5 could also power mobile application processors from several manufacturers.
Source:
DigiTimes
16 Comments on TSMC 3 nm To Enter Volume Production in 2022
-My neighbor is 85, but he says he's having sex 3 times a day. I am 84 and can't even once a quarter.
-Nah, says the doctor, you can also say you are having sex 3 times a day just as well as he does.
Here is the best explanation so far:
www.hardwaretimes.com/samsungs-3nm-node-expected-to-be-less-denser-than-intels-7nm-and-tsmcs-5nm/
Still, at 100 MTr/mm², an average transistor measures around 100 nm x 100 nm, so the finest structures, and spacing between them, are probably 15-20 nm wide.
To TSMC's credit, they prefer to talk about node names, like N3 and N4, and avoid mentioning nanometers. Likewise for Samsung (7LPP and such) and lately Intel.
Calling 10nm, 7nm this-or-that, or visa versa makes us all look basic af. Processor gate production, today, is at the nanometer measurement scale.
The switch from one type of production process to the next (FinFET to gate-all-around) has overlap. Moore's Law isn't dead..yet.
Great current-state writeup here if you're actually into facts:
semiengineering.com/new-transistor-structures-at-3nm-2nm/
Reading it made me come to conclusion that I shouldn't expect TSMC/Samsung 5 nm GPUs anytime in the near future. Those bleeding edge nodes will be preferred for CPU chiplets and Smartphone SoCs. GPUs are simply way too big. The 2 smallest chips from Nvidia and AMD right now - GA107 and Navi 23 - are big boys at ~190 mm² and ~240 mm² respectively.
To put things in perspective, Cezanne - AMD's SoC with Eight Zen 3 cores and a iGPU - is only 180 mm². Apple's A13 is around 100 mm².
Also, between now and 2H2022, Zen 3 will need top drop prices to stay competitive with Intel's aggressive prices, instead of rushing to Zen 4: is this a win in disguise?