TSMC has confirmed that it will mass produce the 3nm process in September, only the Apple iPhone 14 series with the A16 processor can not catch up this year, or use TSMC’s 5nm or improved version of the 4nm process, the first 3nm may be M2 Pro, but the production will not be too much. The initial generation of the N3 process is mainly for early customers with super investment capacity and the pursuit of new processes, such as Apple and AMD, but the application is narrower and only suitable for manufacturing specific products.
TSMC’s 3nm process to the second version of the N3E process next year, that is, 3nm Enhanced enhanced version, on the basis of N3 to improve performance, reduce power consumption, expand the scope of applications, compared to N5 the same performance and density of power consumption by 34%, the same power consumption and density of performance by 18%, or can be transistor density by 60%.
Although the density may be such as the first generation of N3, the N3E process will be the main force used by the major manufacturers to discuss production, including Apple’s new generation of processors, such as the iPhone 15’s 17 processors, the next generation of M3 processors, and AMD’s future Zen5 and so on.
N3E process is expected to mass production in the second half of 2023, there will be trial production this year, a few days ago a leaked internal PPT shows TSMC’s N3E process progress is very good, the yield rate is pleasing.
The N3E process produces 256Mb SRAM chips with yields of up to 80%, mobile and HPC chips with yields of 80%, and ring oscillators with yields of even 92%.
Of course, these are some relatively simple chips, high yields are normal, the actual processor contains very complex circuit units, and yields will continue to polish, but TSMC 3nm process is not as aggressive as Samsung, the overall or very stable.
