To make enough chips for Apple’s most recent iPhones, which normally go on sale in September, TSMC traditionally starts high-volume manufacturing (HVM) of a new node sometime between March and May. However, the creation of TSMC’s N3 node took longer than usual, which is why Apple’s next smartphone processors will utilize a different node. The initial N3 fabrication process is predicted to offer a 10% to 15% performance improvement, a 25% to 30% reduction in power consumption, and an increase in logic density of roughly 1.6 times when compared to the original N5 manufacturing technology. Gate-all-around (GAA) transistor architecture is used in rival Samsung’s new 3nm devices, which were just revealed, while TSMC is not anticipated to implement GAA until its 2nm node. Instead, to improve performance, power consumption, and area, TSMC is employing its new FinFlex architecture to let chip manufacturers mix and match various conventional cell types within a single block. Apple is anticipated to be TSMC’s first client to use the N3 fabrication technology.
