TSMC has set two goals by 2030: to bake chips with a 1 nm wafer and to accommodate up to a trillion transistors in chips. The race with Intel has begun.

At a conference earlier this month, TSMC laid out its roadmap for the rest of the decade. The Taiwanese fries maker is extremely ambitious and wants to achieve two different goals. TSMC, for example, hopes to be the first manufacturer to roll out a chip with a 1nm wafer.

This goal is achieved in several steps. Since this year, TSMC has been producing 3 nm chips on a large scale. Apple is the most important customer, even if production is not running smoothly. TSMC has struggled to generate high returns and has had to make concessions to Apple to cover the cost of failed chips, which is quite unusual in chip contracts. TSMC will focus on the 3 nm process until 2025, then they want to switch to 2 nm.

In 2028, TSMC will take another step with 1.8nm chips. If everything goes according to plan, the 1 NM target should be achieved by 2030. TSMC not only wants to produce smaller chips, but also put more transistors in its chips. The 1 nm chips are said to have 200 billion transistors: The current record holder is the AMD MI300 with 146 billion transistors.

To 1 trillion

200 trillion is just peanuts when it comes to TSMC. According to the chip manufacturer, the use of 3D stacking makes it possible to accommodate even more transistors in one chip. TSMC wants to install 1 trillion (!) transistors in CPUs by 2030. Transistors are an important part of a chip: they regulate the flow of current in the circuit. Although increasing the number of transistors does not directly lead to more computing power, it does ensure that a processor can handle more complex tasks.

TSMC isn’t the only chipmaker with trillion-dollar ambitions. Intel wants to continue the law of its founder Gordon Moore and produce chips with a trillion transistors by 2030. Next year, Intel plans to roll out plenty of 2nm chips (20A) and even plans to start baking the first 1.8nm chips (18A) by the end of 2024. So Intel appears to have the advantage, but in the past the chip giant has often struggled to meet its own schedule.