The Brave New World of Next Generation 2nm Microchips

AUSTIN, Texas - Sept. 5, 2024 - PRLog -- TSMC is Now in Pre-Production to Produce Next Generation 2nm Chips in 2025

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has supercharged the chip foundry business, as AI software companies invest hundreds of millions of dollars in purchasing customized AI chips.

One of the next major initiatives of the chip manufacturing companies is to shrink the size of the circuitry inside AI chips even further so they can be used in low-power mobile devices, such as future Apple iPhone models equipped with the recently announced Apple Intelligence features.

When it comes to packing powerful AI computing in mobile devices that have limited battery resources, shrinking the size of the circuits is the name of the game. Smaller circuits, typically referred to by their gate or node size, can be packed in more tightly and use less power.

How Small Can You Go?

The undisputed king of high-power computing (HPC) wafer chip production is the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (commonly known as TSMC.) The company is the breakaway market leader – with a market share for HPC chips estimated at 90% – and its recent lucrative contracts to produce powerful AI chips for Nvidia and Apple have pushed it further in the lead.

In 2022, TSMC and its rival Samsung began small-scale production of their smallest chips to date, the next generation 3nm chips. Production ramped up throughout 2023, and industry analysts believe that Apple bought all of TSMC's 2023 3nm chip production for their latest products, including the iPhone 15 Pro and the M3-powered MacBook Air and iMac introduced last year.

(Notably, Intel, once the world's chip manufacturing leader, was not able to meet its previously announced plans to produce 3nm chips and has delayed their introduction until 2025. Concerns about Intel's manufacturing capability were also called into question due to reported instability in their recent 13th and 14th generation Intel Core CPU chips, code-named Raptor Lake.)

The industry focus is now shifting to the production of 2nm chips.

Korean and Taiwanese media reports indicate that TSMC has commenced preproduction test runs for the production of 2nm chips at its Taiwan chip fabrication (FAB) plants, with mass production still on schedule for 2025.

Does the Introduction of 2nm Chips Mean the End of Moore's Law is Near?

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