TSMC will supply the first 5nm chips for Apple’s iPhones in 2020

TSMC is reportedly set to deliver the first commercial chips baked on a 5nm manufacturing process to customers in 2020. Apple would be the first party to place orders for chips based on the 5nm node. Presumably, those chips are intended for the iPhones to be released in 2020.

Sources within the Taiwanese tech industry report to DigiTimes that TSMC is well on track to scale up the 5nm process to volume production by 2020. That should happen in the first half of 2020. The first chips based on the 5nm production process should be able to be delivered to customers in that year. Earlier it became clear that the so-called risk production for 5nm should start in the second quarter of this year.

The first customer would be Apple, which would use the 5nm chips for the iPhones to be released in 2020. It is probably Apple’s A14-soc, the successor to the A13. The latter chip will have to appear in the iPhones to be released this year. The A13 is reportedly still being made based on the existing 7nm node.

The Taiwanese manufacturer currently still uses machines for immersion lithography for the 7nm process, but this is expected to change in March. Then the company would begin volume production of the CLN7FF+ node. In this second generation of production for 7nm chips, TSMC will use ASML’s EUV machines.

In the 5nm process, TSMC also uses euv machines from ASML, where the technique is used for up to fourteen layers in chip production. Compared to the 7nm node, this should yield chips that are 17.7 percent faster.