TSMC 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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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.

Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 details leak – 10% performance uplift, significant GPU improvements & more

Sudhanshu — Tue, 26 Jul 2022 12:29:30 +0000

Last week, Qualcomm announced that it will be launching the next-generation Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipsets on November 15, 2022. Now, ahead of the launch, some details about the SoC have surfaced giving us an idea of what to expect.

According to a WFCCtech report, only TSMC will be taking the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 orders from Qualcomm. The chipset, however, will likely not be made on TSMC’s upcoming 3nm node. This is due to the fact that Apple is TSMC’s most lucrative client and has already reserved fab capacity for the M2 Pro and M2 Max chips. So, we are likely looking at Qualcomm using TSMC’s 4nm node again for the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset. For those unaware, it is the same node on which the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 is made.

Samsung has recently started shipping its cutting-edge 3nm node to clients, however, it is reported that no smartphone chipset vendor has approached Samsung for its 3nm GAA chips. A reason for Qualcomm not placing orders with Samsung yet could be the fiasco with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset. The chipset was manufactured on Samsung’s 4nm node and was heavily criticized for its thermal and efficiency issues.

Earlier reports have mentioned that Qualcomm could opt for a “1 + 2 + 2 + 3” cluster instead of the “1 + 3 + 4” CPU cluster used on previous Snapdragon chips. This new configuration will have a high-performance core codenamed Makalu, two Makalu cores, two Matterhorn cores, and three Klein R1 cores. These codenames will correspond to Cortex-X3, Cortex-A715, and an updated Cortex-A510, which are the latest CPU architectures unveiled by ARM.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is anticipated to be coupled with Qualcomm’s most recent Snapdragon X70 5G modem in addition to its unique CPU design, enabling it to achieve new peak download speeds while using up to 60% less power. Tipster Yogesh Brar has informed that we can expect significant gains in the GPU performance and around a 10% uplift in the overall performance of the chipset.

MediaTek Dimensity 2000 specs leaked, will be made on the TSMC 4nm node: Leakster

Ashutosh — Sat, 09 Oct 2021 03:48:00 +0000

Rumors have already begun to suggest that next-gen MediaTek Dimensity flagship chipsets will be based on the new ARMv9 architecture. The most recent of these leaks claim that MediaTek could be one of the first companies to place orders with TSMC‘s 4 nm foundries. Dubbed as Dimensity 2000, major specs have been revealed.

As per Digital Chat Station, a frequent leakster, the Dimensity 2000 will feature one Cortex-X2 prime core clocked at 3.0 GHz, three Cortex-A710 cores, and four A510 cores. This is much like the setup seen on Snapdragon 898 and the Exynos 2200 that will be based on Samsung‘s 4nm process.

Samsung’s recent tie-up with AMD for GPU and Huawei surrounded by an ocean of difficulties in finding chip makers, the upcoming Dimensity 2000 will be the only chipset to use the new Mali-G710 MC10.

The G710 arrives as the successor of G78 and is set to give a 20% boost in the speeds and 35% better performance for machine learning tasks, according to ARM’s official numbers. However, Samsung on the other hand is expecting it to be around 30% faster than the older Mali chips it used. The actual performance will be dictated by the clock speeds on the two 4 nm nodes.

While there were early benchmarks to give a hint at how fast the upcoming chipsets are going to be but that’s not something to go by. Waiting for devices to arrive with these chipsets will be a wiser option to measure the true speeds. All three chips should be made official at the end of this year or in January. It would have launched by the end of this year but owing to the shortage in the semiconductor industry, plans have been altered. The first ARMv9 phones with the new chips could be out as early as next year.

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