Apple's chip supplier TSMC plans to release 2nm chips next year, BusinessKorea reports.
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Apple is expected to switch its chip to a 2nm process next year to use TSMC's development. It is reported that TSMC is making confident progress in mastering the 2nm process. The company's vice president of process development, Zhang Xiaogang, said that “the development of the 2nm process is in full swing” and mass production is planned for 2025.
Some rumors have suggested that TSMC may be forced to delay full-scale mass production of the 2nm process until 2026 due to technical issues related to the first use of Gate-All-Around (GAA) technology. These rumors were dispelled by Zhang, who confirmed that "Product yield with GAA has reached 90% of the target", which shows significant progress. Jeff Williams, Apple's COO, recently made a low-key visit to Taiwan to meet with the president of TSMC and secure the supply of 2nm chips.
The iPhone 15 Pro uses the A17 Pro chip, which is manufactured using TSMC's 3nm process. It allows you to fit more transistors in a smaller area, which increases performance and efficiency. Apple's M4 chip, which recently debuted in the new iPad Pro, uses an improved version of this 3nm technology. The move to 2nm chips should bring further improvements, with performance gains expected to be between 10 and 15% and power consumption down to 30% compared to the 3nm process.
TSMC remains the only company capable of producing 2nm and 3nm chips at the scale and quality Apple needs. For the production of 3nm chips, Apple used all the available capacity of TSMC, and the manufacturer plans to triple its production capacity for this node by the end of the year to meet the growing demand. 2nm chips may first appear in the iPhone 17 line in 2025.