Chip production on the 3nm process, which is now the most advanced technology in the world, is already running at a fairly high pace. But for now it’s all taken by Apple.
Yesterday we had a report from the DigiTimes website, according to which something is happening with Intel’s plan to manufacture processors or other products “outsourced” on TSMC’s advanced 3nm process. The company has reportedly pushed back the date of its orders from the original earlier date to the last quarter of 2024. DigiTimes brought even more news about TSMC’s new technology, according to which it seems that only Apple will have a monopoly on these currently most advanced chips for a while.
DigiTimes reports on its Chinese-language branch that the 3nm process is now doing slightly better than the company expected. It exceeded expectations in several ways. On the one hand, it is said that more wafers are already being produced than expected (according to another source, the production exceeded 1000 wafers per day).
Also, the process is said to have more future customers and, perhaps most importantly, the yield is also said to be better than expected. This may also be behind the volume of production in which usable wafers are listed. The current level should already be sufficient for mass production, which has now officially started running at the Fab 18 factory.
From the beginning, the 3nm process will belong only to Apple
From a PC hardware perspective, I’m not entirely happy with where these chips are going. According to DigiTimes, practically the entire capacity of the 3nm technology (N3 process) of this Apple technology is now occupied. It’s not completely unprecedented, as Apple has been willing and able to be the first to jump on the bandwagon of the latest technology in previous years, and is apparently a priority customer for TSMC. The fact that it will have a monopoly on 3nm chips for a while at the beginning is not unexpected, and it may also be due to the fact that such early deployment is not economically viable for others.
According to DigiTimes, other customers will follow, the first of which should be Qualcomm (apparently with a new generation of mobile SoC Snapdragon 8 for top smartphone models). But MediaTek is supposed to be relatively aggressive with its entry. The question is how long Apple’s monopoly on 3nm chips will last, but it will probably last a few months.
Unfortunately, there is still no news about when AMD or Nvidia could deploy 3nm production (Intel was already discussed). The first AMD processors with the Zen 5 architecture were quite possibly moved from the originally planned 3nm process to the older 4nm.
Apple should produce the A17 processor for iPhones on the 3nm process, in which, in addition to the 3nm technology, a new CPU architecture pushing the performance forward could be premiered, which the A15 and A16 chips did not bring. So it could potentially be a very important new SoC. However, only the more expensive iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max are said to have 3nm chips, while the rest of the range will still have the 4nm A16 chip from the previous generation.
In addition to the A17, 3nm technology could also be used for the new generation of computer processors (M3), where the new CPU core architecture could also appear. The M3 could therefore also be an important shift, but its introduction will probably be a little later than in the case of the A17.
Resources: DigiTimesDan Nystedt (1, 2)
