TSMC wants to produce chips at 10nm by the end of 2016
TSMC promises to start producing 10nm chips at the end of 2016 and the first 7nm test chips should be realized in the first quarter of 2017. With this, TSMC seems to intend to surpass competitors such as Intel and Samsung in the ‘nanometer race’.
The progress of the 10nm production is on schedule, TSMC claims in an explanation of the quarterly figures. The Taiwanese chip manufacturer makes processors for Qualcomm, Nvidia, MediaTek and Broadcom, among others. Every step towards smaller production processes brings advantages in terms of consumption, which, for example, smartphones and tablets can benefit from.
Compared to 16nm finfet, the 10nm features show a performance gain of 15 percent at the same consumption, or a reduction in consumption of 35 percent at the same speed,” said Mark Liu, co-CEO of TSMC. The company says it has agreements with customers for 10nm tape outs for smartphone and network processors and HPC chips. Tape outs are the times when customers send their final designs to the manufacturer for chip production.
TSMC also reports that 16nm production with finfet transistors is now running at full steam. TSMC is lagging behind competitor Samsung, which has been producing 14nm for months, but TSMC seems to intend to quickly catch up. “We aim to qualify 7 nanometers in the first quarter of 2017, just five quarters after 10 nanometers,” says TSMC, for example. Despite the different designation, TSMC’s 16nm and Samsung’s 14nm process are equivalent in scale.
Intel announced last week that it was forced to postpone 10nm production until the end of 2017. Intel already has several generations of experience with finfet transistors, which provides a major advantage for production. On paper, Samsung and TSMC seem to be catching up with Intel in the ‘nanometer’ race, but at the same time, the feature sizes of transistors seem to be becoming more of a marketing term without really making a significant difference between the nodes of different manufacturers.