4nm Archives - Gizmochina

TSMC 4nm & 5nm chips made in the US will have a 30% higher cost

Sean — Thu, 04 May 2023 10:44:23 +0000

TSMC is all set to start manufacturing chips from its latest cutting edge semiconductor site that it is situated in the US. Although, it appears that the pricing for these advanced chips will be noticeably more expensive than the ones it makes in its home market of Taiwan.

TSMC’s US made chips are more expensive than their Taiwanese counterparts

For those unaware, TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) is the world’s largest contract chipmaker and usually made chips for various tech giants from its facility in Taiwan. However, the new chips that will be manufactured in the US will be around 30 percent more expansive than its ‘home made’ counterparts, as per a DigiTimes report. The reason for this move from the company is due to the higher cost of its operations in the US.

According to the new report, TSMC’s N4 and N5 process (4nm and 5nm respectively) that will be manufactured in the US will likely be between 20 percent to 30 percent higher. This isn’t surprising since the new site will carry heftier operations costs. The same can be expected from its new plant in Japan where it setup a semiconductor manufacturing site to build less advanced N28/N22 and N16/N12 process nodes. These chips will cost around 10 to 15 percent more than the same chips made in Taiwan.

The report adds that these price hikes are being made to maintain the company’s 53 percent margin rate. In other words, it has to raise the cost to clients to ensure its own profits. It remains to be seen how the customers of TSMC, which includes the likes on AMD, Qualcomm, Apple, and others would offset this rise in cost in their own products. Notably, this news also arrives as the company eyes a 15 billion US Dollars incentive in the US.

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TSMC Production Plant in Arizona To Start Mass Producing 4nm Chips Next Year

Jeet — Mon, 20 Mar 2023 06:34:42 +0000

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, popularly known as TSMC, is setting up a new production plan in Arizona, United States at a cost of around $12 billion.

The plant was originally planned to manufacture 5nm chips but recently it was revealed that the plant will be making 4nm chips. Now, a new report from Taiwanese media claims that the production of 4nm chips in the Arizona plant could start next year.

According to the report from Economic Daily, TSMC’s new plant in Arizona will start producing 4nm chips from 2024. The report further adds that Qualcomm’s Global Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Chen Ruowen said that Qualcomm will be the first customer of TSMC’s US plant’s 4nm chips.

It was earlier reported that AMD and NVIDIA were among the companies that urged TSMC to start making 4nm chips in the US. The development comes at a time when companies are now planning to source chips manufactured in the United States. Further, this new plant should also allow a whole host of new companies and jobs to appear in support of the manufacturing facility.

Apart from Qualcomm, Apple, AMD, and NVIDIA are also expected to place a large order for the chips manufactured by TSMC in the Arizona facility. In the second phase of the upgrade at the Arizona plant, TSMC will upgrade the facility to produce more advanced 3nm chips, which is likely to happen around 2026.

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Pixel 8’s Google Tensor 3 Chip Could be Fabricated on Samsung’s 4nm Process Node

Anubhav — Tue, 14 Mar 2023 04:39:12 +0000

Samsung Foundry, the second-largest foundry in the world after TSMC, is set to begin mass production of chips using its third-generation 4nm process node. This comes after the company had yield issues with its 4nm chip production last year, resulting in Qualcomm moving production of its Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1, Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, and the upcoming Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 to TSMC. However, Samsung has seen improvements in its yield rates, which have risen from 35% at one point last year to 60% now, as well as boosts in performance and energy-efficiency. We might get to see the new 4nm process node in Google’s Pixel 8 lineup, which is expected to release later this year.

While 3nm is the most advanced node available, Samsung’s 4nm and 5nm processes are currently being used more frequently, accounting for 22% of chips produced during the third quarter of last year compared to 16% manufactured using 6nm and 7nm process nodes. The only phones expected to be powered by 3nm silicon this year are the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Ultra.

Google’s Pixel 8 series, set to be released in the fourth quarter of this year, is likely to be powered by the third-generation 4nm process node, with the Google Tensor 3 chipset for the new handsets expected to be produced using this technology. The Pixel Fold, Pixel Tablet, and Pixel 7a are expected to be powered by the Tensor 2, which is built on Samsung’s second-generation 4nm node.

Both TSMC and Samsung plan to produce 4nm chips in the United States starting next year, with TSMC’s fab in Phoenix, Arizona and Samsung Foundry’s facility in Taylor, Texas, adding a 4nm production line. TSMC hopes to start shipping 2nm chips to customers in 2026, while Samsung plans to begin 2nm production in 2025, followed by 1.4nm production in 2027. Intel has also stated that it plans to match TSMC and Samsung Foundry in 2024 and regain process leadership the following year.

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Apple has TSMC make 4nm chips from its Arizona plant in 2024

Sean — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 10:11:38 +0000

Apple has apparently requested TSMC to manufacture its next generation of chips based on 4nm process technology from its new plant in Arizona. The company aims to have the production begin sometime in the year 2024.

The news arrives from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman (Via MacRumors). For those unaware, this Arizona plant had originally been planned to startproduction using its 5nm process technology. However, as the Cupertino based giant and other companies aiming to source components from within the US, the world’s largest contract chipmaker has upgraded its plans to offer more cutting edge chip production technology in its Arizona plant.

The new report further added that TSMC would make 20,000 wafers per month at its Arizona facility, although this figure might rise as well. Out of the 20,000 wafers, the iPhone maker will use around a third of the entire output alone. This news is also in line with Apple CEO Tim Cook who has previously told employees that the company plans to source chips from the Arizona factory soon.

Reportedly, the new plans will be announced in Phoenix next week with key figures like President Joe Biden, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, and Apple CEO Tim Cook. Other notable figures include AMD CEO Lisa Su and NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang. Apart from the 4nm production, TSMC will apparently also officially has plans for a second phase that involves an adjacent facility that will produce more advanced 3nm chips as well.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 flagship smartphone chipset goes official

Jeet — Wed, 16 Nov 2022 01:31:03 +0000

Qualcomm, one of the leading smartphone chipset makers, has today officially announced its next-generation Snapdragon series flagship processor for high-end smartphones — Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2.

As the name itself indicates, the newly announced Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is a successor to the last year’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor, and it comes with a focus on better and more efficient performance, especially when it comes to AI-related tasks.

The Kryo CPU on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 includes one prime core based on the ARM Cortex-X3 clocked at 3.2GHz, as well as four performance cores at 2.8GHz and three efficiency cores at 2.0GHz. Compared to last year’s chipset, these are 200MHz to 300MHz faster. The company says the CPU is 35 percent faster than the previous generation and 40 percent more power efficient.

Its latest Adreno GPU is claimed to offer 25 percent higher performance while being 45 percent more power efficient. It also brings support for hardware-accelerated ray tracing to the Snapdragon platform. There’s support for faster memory technologies, including LP-DDR5X RAM at up to 4,200MHz and new UFS 4.0 storage.

Similar to the SD8 Gen 1, the newly announced Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is built using a 4nm process. As for the display, the chipset comes with support for QHD+ resolution at up to 144Hz or 4K resolution at 60Hz. It also supports external displays up to 4K resolution at 60Hz with a 10-bit Rec. 2020 color gamut, HDR10+, and Dolby Vision.

Coming to the camera department, it has a triple 18-bit ISP that supports up to three 36MP cameras simultaneously or up to 200MP for a single-camera configuration. It also supports 108MP camera sensors with zero shutter lag. The company has also improved support for the latest Sony and Samsung sensors as Sony sensors with DOL-HDR and Samsung’s 200MP HP3 sensors are optimized to work with the ISP on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2.

Qualcomm says it has made improvements throughout the Hexagon processor for up to 4.35x faster Artificial Intelligence (AI) performance and claims that the chip can handle more complex tasks, like translating a language into multiple languages in real time. It is also the world’s first chip to have support for Wi-Fi 7 technology.

It packs a Qualcomm Snapdragon X70 modem, which was announced earlier this year at the Mobile World Congress. It has its own AI processor for boosting 5G performance and comes with support for dual active 5G SIMs, which means that users can use two different 5G networks simultaneously.

Qualcomm revealed a list of partners for the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor, which includes Motorola, OPPO, and ASUS ROG, among others. However, Samsung is missing from the list, but we are pretty sure the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S23 series flagship smartphones will come powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC. The company says that smartphones powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 will start getting launched by the end of this year.