Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) has officially revealed the existence of a new 4nm manufacturing process which has remained unannounced before now. The manufacturing process falls between the 5nm and 3nm nodes that are already on the company’s roadmap.
TSMC CEO Liu Deyin is reported to have announced at the company’s shareholders meeting, Tuesday, that the Taiwanese foundry will launch a 4nm process “N4”. The N4 process is an enhanced version of its most advanced 5nm process “N5P”, and is expected to enter mass production in 2023.
TSMC is obviously repeating the old routine of the 6nm process N6. It is an upgraded version of the strongest 7nm process N7+ . The advantage is that while performance and power consumption continue to be optimized, the design is compatible with each other. Customers can easily migrate and obtain it at a lower cost.
TSMC’s mobile chipset routine started at 16nm and it strictly adhered to the technical standards at that time but Samsung’s similar process was called 14nm. From the paper, TSMC’s 16nm process fell behind Samsung’s 14nm, so it strengthened and upgraded its 16nm node and that gave birth to the 12nm process. The rest, as they say, is history.
According to the plan, TSMC will mass-produce the first generation of 5nm in the fourth quarter of this year. The company has also completed the design framework of the 3nm process. The 3nm process is expected to enter trial production in the first half of 2021. The Taiwanese semiconductor giant is also accelerating the 2nm process.
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