Wednesday, January 1st 2025
TSMC Is Getting Ready to Launch Its First 2nm Production Line
TSMC is making progress with its most advanced 2 nm (N2) node, a recent report from MoneyDJ quoting industry sources indicates that the company is setting up a test production line at the Hsinchu Baoshan fab (Fab 20) in Taiwan. In the early stages, TSMC aims for small monthly outputs with about 3,000-3,500 wafers. However, the company has big plans to combine production from two factories in Hsinchu and Kaohsiung, TSMC expects to deliver more than 50,000 wafers monthly by the end of 2025 and by the end of 2026 projecting a production of around 125,000 wafers per month. Breaking it down by location, the Hsinchu factory should reach 20,000-25,000 wafers monthly by late 2025, growing to about 60,000-65,000 by early 2027. Meanwhile, the Kaohsiung factory is expected to produce 25,000-30,000 wafers monthly by late 2025, also increasing to 60,000-65,000 by early 2027.
TSMC's chairman C.C. Wei says there's more demand for these 2 nm chips than there was for the 3 nm. This increased "appetite" for 2 nm chips is likely due to the significant improvements this technology brings: it uses 24-35% less power, can run 15% faster at the same power level, and can fit 15% more transistors in the same space compared to the 3 nm chips. Apple will be the first company to use these chips, followed by other major tech companies like MediaTek, Qualcomm, Intel, NVIDIA, AMD, and Broadcom.
Sources:
TrendForce, MoneyDJ
TSMC's chairman C.C. Wei says there's more demand for these 2 nm chips than there was for the 3 nm. This increased "appetite" for 2 nm chips is likely due to the significant improvements this technology brings: it uses 24-35% less power, can run 15% faster at the same power level, and can fit 15% more transistors in the same space compared to the 3 nm chips. Apple will be the first company to use these chips, followed by other major tech companies like MediaTek, Qualcomm, Intel, NVIDIA, AMD, and Broadcom.
38 Comments on TSMC Is Getting Ready to Launch Its First 2nm Production Line
I never had a problem upgrading GPUs every generation when prices were steady. I always got a big improvement, and the cost wasn't very high after selling the old GPU. But these days you have to pay more to get a small improvement, which is also a result of diminishing returns in graphics technology. You need the latest card to run a brand new game that looks marginally better than games from 5 years ago.
Hardware is expensive to r&d and manufacture, games are expensive to develop (and take a long time), it's a slippery slope. Something needs to change before the gaming industry crashes. But I guess these companies don't really care about gaming, the entire focus is on professional markets, which are eating up all these new chips no matter the price.
Not sure it's that much easier either, since it seems like it's low level code?
You'd have to ask the big game engine makers anyway (UE5, Unity, idTech, Godot and such) over whether they actually provide mGPU support, as well.
Edit: Here is a great article if you want to know everything about chip sizes.
www.angstronomics.com/p/the-truth-of-tsmc-5nm
7nm process has 100 MTr/mm2
5nm process has 130 MTr/mm2
3nm process has 200 MTr/mm2
Actually, my brain can't process such numbers, 200,000,000 transistors per square millimeter
p.s. but again I have a feeling I'm "off topic"If it's that easy, go ahead and make 200 million transistors per square millimeter.
Its been tried... even before DX12. I can't remember the name. There was a thing that did want to use your IGP alongside your dGPU.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Hybrid_Graphics
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterogeneous_System_Architecture
The good news is that if you buy something decent today, such as the Ryzen AI 9 and Radeon RX 7600 or Radeon 9070, you will be fine to not upgrade forever, since you will never get a upgrade-worthy performance upgrade from the next-generation CPUs and GPUs.
This said, 3nm Radeons/Ryzens are a 2027 thing, 2nm Radeons/Ryzens are toward 2030.