Engineers and support personnel have reportedly been sent to Zhuke’s R&D facility in Baoshan City to prepare for trial production of the new chips. Trial production is planned for 2024 and mass production for 2025.

what is known

For mass production of 2-nanometer chips, the company will use the new factory in Taichung in western Taiwan, as well as increasing the capacity of its factory in Baoshan.

It is important for TSMC to start working with next-generation technology as early as possible, as competitors threaten its dominant position in the market.

• Samsung has announced that it will begin production of 3 nanometer chips in the summer of 2022 and will likely approach 2 nanometers in the near future.
• Also, Japanese chipmaker Rapidus announced in January 2023 that it plans to launch a line for the production of 2nm semiconductor prototypes very soon. Mass production is planned for 2025.

As the source notes, TSMC’s 2 nanometer processors will be the first to use the new Versatile Gate (GAA) transistor architecture. However, unforeseen obstacles may arise, so the company probably wants to know about them as early as possible.

It is also worth noting that the same TSMC reported on the development of a 1 nanometer technical process, in which in 2021 it replaces conventional silicon with bismuth and molybdenum sulfide. Now nothing is heard about this development. Probably the company wants to go through all the stages of the development of processor technology, and not immediately go from 4-5 nanometers to one.

When IBM produced its first chip using a 2-nanometer process in 2021, it claimed that a smartphone with such a processor was so energy efficient that it could “live” for 4 days on a single charge. There was no similar statement from TSMC, so it’s unclear how energy efficient its technology is.