One of the reasons why TSMC is so favored by companies like Apple, Qualcomm, NVIDIA, and MediaTek is due to their use of cutting-edge chip manufacturing technologies. The company has been at the forefront of chip manufacturing and come 2025, we can expect TSMC to introduce its 2nm process. The company actually revealed some details about its 2nm process during the IEEE International Electron Device Meeting this month.
Improved performance and efficiency
During the briefing, TSMC shared some details about its 2nm process. According to the company, the 2nm process delivers 15% higher performance and up to 30% lower power consumption. This should significantly improve the efficiency of the chips. The 2nm process also achieves 1.15x higher transistor density. This is achieved by adopting the use of Gate-All-Around (GAA) nanosheet transistors and N2 NanoFlex.
This in turn allows manufacturers to introduce logic cells in a smaller area, ultimately resulting in optimized performance in the node.
There are also additional benefits for TSMC to transition from the use of more traditional FinFET technology to its N2 NanoFlex nanosheet transistors. This includes being able to gain better control over the flow of current. This will give manufacturers more flexibility when it comes to fine-tuning certain parameters and adapting their chips to specific use cases.
Since companies like Apple and Qualcomm are some of TSMC’s biggest customers, it will be interesting to see what kind of improvements these companies can make to their chipsets based on the 2nm process.
Why this matters
They say the shortest distance between two points is usually a straight line. This logic kind of applies to the chip manufacturing process. This is why companies like TSMC and Samsung have been pushing to try and improve the process technology.
It might sound like marketing fluff, and to a certain extent it is, but the gains are real. Basically, “nm” refers to nanometer technology. It measures the size of the chip’s transistors and components. It also represents the distance between the transistors. The idea is that the closer the distance, the less time is needed for travel. This in turn makes the chips faster, more powerful, and also more efficient.
Whether or not these gains can be felt in real life is debatable. It largely depends on what you’re doing with your phone and what your needs are. Despite that, it’s hard to argue that these are indeed pretty huge technological advancements.