TSMC has one of the most important partners in Apple. We told you this recently on MuyComputerPro, when we saw that the giant from Cupertino represents approximately 26% of the total income of the Taiwanese company. By comparison, AMD, TSMC’s second largest customer, represents only 10% of its total revenue.

With this in mind, it’s easy to see why TSMC is more than willing to “pamper” Apple in terms of access to the most advanced nodes and everything related to delivery. We should therefore not be surprised that the apple society has all the ballots to become one one of the first companies to use a 2nm TSMC node.

As DigiTimes, one of the most important resources in Taiwan’s distribution chain, told us, TSMC is working fast to start production of 2nm chips sometime in 2025. If it manages to enter the production phase soon, iPhones could be the first to do so this year. the node will use. We continue with the order we have placed so far, and unless Apple changes the nomenclature, we’ll talk about the iPhone 17.

The Apple A19 SoC would look into the abyss of silicon limits

Of course, if the jump to the 2nm node is confirmed. As our most advanced readers remember, with every leap into a new manufacturing process the size of the transistors is reduced and thus the size of the logic gates. This allows us to improve energy efficiency and performance and allows us to pack multiple transistors into a silicon chip of a given size.

However, reducing the production process brings very significant challenges. Reducing the size of transistors and logic gates increases the risk of serious problems, such as electrical leakage, which cause the transistors to be unable to control their states and that although they try to prevent the current from flowing, it eventually escapes. The 2nm node will pose an important challenge in this regard because theoretically the silicon limit was between 1 and 1.5 nm, at least for silicon-based structures.

It will be interesting to see what Apple can do with the 2nm TSMC node not only in its smartphone chips, but also when you decide to use this process on an M-series SoCPersonally, I think that if Apple manages to jump to 2nm in 2025, the first M-series chips made in this node may arrive next year. However, I remind you that we will have to go through a 3nm node first.