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Apple Silicon Likely to Benefit as TSMC Aims to Launch 2nm Chips by 2025
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They already did, using branded intel 7, Intel 4, Intel 3, and (to add more confusion) Intel 20A.
Despite the impressive engineering feats involved, the whole 5nm -> 3nm -> 2nm nomenclature is just ultra-pure marketing BS and everybody in the industry knows it. There is maybe one dimension in the whole process that is 2nm, but under no circumstances does the implied chip area go from 25 -> 9 -> 4 like they'd have you believe. They really need to toss that nomenclature and come up with a new metric like transistors/µm^2 so you can reasonably compare one foundry to another.
I’m British but why aren’t these machines made in the USA? The USA invented all of this in the first place - Silicon Valley, the clue is in the name of course.
Given the huge strategic importance of semiconductors to the modern world, why has a US company become critically dependent on suppliers outside of the USA?
Sadly in a world where Ukraine has happened we can’t be sure that seamless international trade is a given.
I’m not trying to rub anyone’s nose in it, I’m just genuinely curious - and I do realise that I’m going off topic.
The same reason so many things are made in China etc. - it's cheaper.
Some atoms are way smaller. 0.1 is (theoretically) the size of an Oxygen atom, which is the largest kind.
If you asked a person 300 years ago if it was humanly possible to create a 2nm small thing, they would have said now.
Now, you state that's not possible, but perhaps you're not aware of some technologies that make that actually possible.
1 hour of manpower in China - so far - costs a lot less than 1 hour of manpower in the USA. That's because the population there is way poorer than the average US citizens.
Personally, I hope that one day every worker will get the same wage independently of the country they live in.
But so fare there will be inequalities on this planet, that will remain a dream, and the super rich will remain such.
I think I will wait for the optimized 3 NM. This means I will likely have to push out my upgrade from my iPhone X to fall 2024, possibly even spring 2025 because I don’t want to purchase the iPhone 16 Pro Max as early adopter.
But I will likely be upgrading much sooner, since I will want take advantage of the optimized 2 NM in 2026, but since the 20th anniversary iPhone will be coming out 2027, I might just wait until then to upgrade again.
But I will likely be upgrading much sooner, since I will want take advantage of the optimized 2 NM in 2026, but since the 20th anniversary iPhone will be coming out 2027, I might just wait until then to upgrade again.
This is roughly only 10x the diameter of a carbon atom. Conventional circuits are approaching the quantum scale. Crazy.
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Intel has fabs in USA but could not keep up with the nm race. Taiwan and South Korea have simply become very skilled to make state of the art chips. Cost is also an issue.
You raise a good point though and EU are already begun discussions about chip fabs on the European continent to ensure chips enough to feed the EU based industries. They already started before the Ukraine war due to chip shortage. Similarly, EU will ensure internal production of medicine, vaccines and other critical medical goods to not be too dependent on others in a pandemic. Despite UK living EU, I hope we will have a nice collaboration on critical products across the channel.
In the real world nobody cares about process size. People care about performance, heat and battery life.
If Intel isn't delivering on those, it doesn't matter if their process technically qualifies as another name.
Here's hoping that the SOC GPU also receives rapid advancement. I'd love to see the Apple chips give NVIDIA a run for its money (not saying they will). AAA gaming titles on the Mac is the dream so I can ditch my PC once and for all.
Cue "I still have my 2015 MacBook Pro Guy" saying "this is the machine Im waiting for!"
A silicon atom is about 1.9 Å across so that would likely be the hard limit. We'll likely hit that limit by the end of the 2020s.
There are several paths forward beyond that. Parallel computing (ie: cramming even more cores onto chips) and accelerators for specific types of computing are both options - think the Neural Engine or high powered GPUs.
There are other materials and other technologies out there that are being researched but are nowhere near maturity so while computing power may plateau for a while it will still progress.
I’m curious if the 2nm is the lithography size/width of the copper being used within transistors.
The engineering that goes into making stuff this small is amazing!
They don't. TSMC call it N2. Look at their press releases or their slides, eg https://pr.tsmc.com/english/news/2939
It's JOURNALISTS that call it 2nm. Which tells you something.
To a large extent the technology is being produced in the USA and outside of Taiwan .
For example from about a year ago
“…. Today’s announcement isn’t just that our new Gate-All-Around (GAA) nanosheet device architecture enables us to fit 50 billion transistors in a space roughly the size of a fingernail. It’s not just that IBM Research’s second-generation nanosheet technology has paved a path to the 2-nanometer (nm) node. Or that we produced this breakthrough technology on a 300 millimeter (mm) wafer built at IBM Research’s semiconductor research facility in Albany, NY. …”
Introducing the world’s first 2 nm node chip | IBM Research Blog
IBM Research’s second-generation nanosheet technology has paved a path to the 2 nm node, produced on a 300 mm wafer.
There are two major phases in rolling out the tech . Inventing the baseline tech and large scale manufacturing of products based on the tech . IBM is not in the wafer manufacturing business anymore , do continue to do research. So do several other labs in the USA. So pragmatically the is more ‘R’ than ‘D’ in the R&D mix .
There is real R&D going on in Taiwan, but the notion that they are the only ones ( or the only ones that matter ) is myopic read from a propri press release. ( IBM isn’t doing it all by themselves either. )
this tech has multiple names at different companies . “Gate all around “ “ nano sheets” , RibbonFET, MBCFET ,etc ( Samsung in Korea ( if recall correctly they have an intellectual property agreement with IBM ) , TSMC , and Intel )
The players in the 3D sheet fabrication game are outlined on this page.
Intel's Process Roadmap to 2025: with 4nm, 3nm, 20A and 18A?!
Because TSMC has had the fewest fab hiccups over the last 4-5 years some folks are picking them to be first to a high volume , tolerable defect process . That isn’t necessarily going to be true. This is a pretty big inflection point in manufacturing and everybody is going to need to move to new tools to lay things down more 3 dimensional.
Samsung is making stuff now in low volumes. they is a couple of years for them to figure it out. If they do then they would be past the teething phase . If do not they opens door for TSMC and Intel . Similar issues for Intel. If they do pathfinding now and latch onto a solution in next 1-2 years then they are back in the game . Pathfindin on “RibbonFET” doesn’t have to wait for the current FinFet ( Intel 4 and 3 ) to shave out their process. More expensive but can run development more in parallel .
But both Samsung and Intel would need to clean up track record of over promise and under deliver.
Samsung has rigid hierarchy issues. Right leader plugged into org at right places and they could execute well. Relatively less rigid , Intel also has issues org getting in the way of doing good engineering .
TSMC had hiccups when the first moved over to FinFET. Their inflection point transitions are not spectacularly clean either . wont be surprise if there is a slip from 2025 for high volume output ( not start up ) .
Through the beauty of capitalism and globalization.
Our modern economy is royally screwed because we set up a system where companies (especially in developed countries like the US) are incentivized to ship everything off to nations where materials/labor is cheaper. This is largely why we've spent decades with obscenely cheap consumer goods, but also the almost complete loss of well-paying manufacturing jobs.
Thankfully, the chip shortage/supply chain issues have reminded nations why it's not a great idea to put all your eggs in one basket, so we're finally starting to bring some manufacturing back.
That’s great but with inflation by 2025 these MacBook Pros will be starting at $5000, lol. I’m starting to wonder if I should just upgrade now because my money is getting devalued and the used value of this computer might actually increase rather than decrease, much like my car.