Wednesday, April 13th 2022
TSMC's N3E Node Said to Have Good Yields, Volume Production Expected Q2 2023
Back in March there were reports of TSMC's N3E node having been moved from 2024 to the end of 2023. However, it seems like the node is already seeing better than expected yields and is now being pulled in further and TSMC is expecting to start volume production as early as Q2 in 2023. The node does appear to have been frozen when it comes to further development as of the end of March. Yields are said to be much higher than the N3B node, which is also under development, but with limited information available about it.
The first customer for the new node is expected to be Apple, as the company is largely paying for much of the cutting edge node development at TSMC. However, both Intel and Qualcomm are said to be some of the first customers for the new node. More details should hopefully be announced tomorrow during TSMC's first quarter earnings call. The N3E node is a reduced layer EUV process, but before it goes into mass production, it's likely we'll be seeing the N3 node first. Early production of 3 nm parts later this year is expected to be at around 10 to 20k wafers per month initially, rising to about 25 to 35k a month once TSMC's new fab is ready. Once the N3E node is in full swing, the monthly capacity of 3 nm parts should be around 50k wafers a month, but depending on customer demand, it might end up being even higher.
Source:
@chiakokhua
The first customer for the new node is expected to be Apple, as the company is largely paying for much of the cutting edge node development at TSMC. However, both Intel and Qualcomm are said to be some of the first customers for the new node. More details should hopefully be announced tomorrow during TSMC's first quarter earnings call. The N3E node is a reduced layer EUV process, but before it goes into mass production, it's likely we'll be seeing the N3 node first. Early production of 3 nm parts later this year is expected to be at around 10 to 20k wafers per month initially, rising to about 25 to 35k a month once TSMC's new fab is ready. Once the N3E node is in full swing, the monthly capacity of 3 nm parts should be around 50k wafers a month, but depending on customer demand, it might end up being even higher.
14 Comments on TSMC's N3E Node Said to Have Good Yields, Volume Production Expected Q2 2023
The customer list of obviously not complete, nor from TSMC, it's just companies that are expected to want access to the N3E node early on.
Before a few days they announced that they moved 18A risk production from H1 2025 to H2 2024, still i don't think less than 9 months between generations in the client space make sense, so probably we will have the following regarding launches:
Q4 2021 Alder Lake 7nm
Q3 2022 Raptor Lake 7nm
Q2 2023 Meteor Lake 4nm
Q1 2024 Arrow Lake 3nm
Q4 2024 Lunar Lake 20A
Q3 2025 Nova Lake 18A
The rumour goes that Arrow i9 will be 8P+32E cores and that Nova will be their most extensive redesign since Core era, with +50% performance vs Lunar, or something like that, we will see.
www.screenhacker.com/screensite/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/dutsR8qBw5Co4HAs.jpg
The peculiar thing is that the official slide suggests 2024 Arrow Lake comes with TSMC N3 graphics which is extremely early!I don't know if tech is dying because sales doesn't suggest that, but we are starting to see an acceleration in performance/price point in relation with what was thought probable before let's say 3 years. If you are trying to suggest that advancement in tech keeps getting harder to convince people to upgrade because for some people the level we are now is good enough for many people, yes OK maybe (the economy also plays a major role for many people not deeming necessary to upgrade), certainly many companies trying to artificially limit their designs somehow in order to force their customer base to upgrade sooner than later, whether this is phone batteries, or windows compatibility-support or GPU ram (3070-3080) etc, but the switch success is a special case for many reasons, if Microsoft had tried to launch a console with switch hardware level capabilities probably would have died a miserable death, the same would be true if Nintendo was trying to compete with switch level hardware in a more traditional style console design like PS5/XBOX SX. But anyway i see your point! (btw your writing style reminds me someone in Anandtech, i used to post there 13 years ago, I don't remember the name, but his avatar's picture was a hawk if i remember correctly)
www.anandtech.com/show/16593/tsmc-to-spend-100b-on-fabs-and-rd-over-three-years-2nm-arizona-fab-more
TLDR, TSMC is investing 100 billion dollars (100.000.000.000) between R&D and the fabs themselves, between 2021 and 2023. I'm not sure AMD can invest that much money.