TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) has released the roadmap for its 3nm process technology’s development. The world’s largest contract chip manufacturer will have risk production start by 2021 and volume production starts by the second half of 2022.
The Taiwanese chipmaking giant will use the FinFET transistor structure for the N3 (namely 3nm process) technology. This information was revealed by CEO CC Wei at an investor meeting earlier this week, on 16th April 2020. According to the senior TSMC executive, the technology behind N3 will be a “full node stride” over its foundry’s existing N5 (5nm process) technology.
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Wei also revealed that the 5nm process technology from TSMC is already in the volume production stage with satisfactory yield rates. Furthermore, the firm expects the production to remain “very fast and smooth” and the trend will carry over to the second half of 2020. This is likely due to the healthy chipset demand especially for new generation smartphone flagships that have yet to be launched.
At the moment, the 5nm chips account for about 10 percent of its total wafer revenue in 2020. The TSMC CEO believes that the 5nm process will be long lived like its 7nm, 16nm, and 28nm process. The company is also expanding its existing 7nm foundry with N7, N7+, and N6, with the latter two being EUV based processes. These will account for more than 30 percent of the company’s total wafer revenue in 2020.
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