Discussion Leading Edge Foundry Node advances (TSMC, Samsung Foundry, Intel) - [2020 - 2025]

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DisEnchantment

Golden Member
Mar 3, 2017
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TSMC's N7 EUV is now in its second year of production and N5 is contributing to revenue for TSMC this quarter. N3 is scheduled for 2022 and I believe they have a good chance to reach that target.


N7 performance is more or less understood.


This year and next year TSMC is mainly increasing capacity to meet demands.

For Samsung the nodes are basically the same from 7LPP to 4 LPE, they just add incremental scaling boosters while the bulk of the tech is the same.

Samsung is already shipping 7LPP and will ship 6LPP in H2. Hopefully they fix any issues if at all.
They have two more intermediate nodes in between before going to 3GAE, most likely 5LPE will ship next year but for 4LPE it will probably be back to back with 3GAA since 3GAA is a parallel development with 7LPP enhancements.




Samsung's 3GAA will go for HVM in 2022 most likely, similar timeframe to TSMC's N3.
There are major differences in how the transistor will be fabricated due to the GAA but density for sure Samsung will be behind N3.
But there might be advantages for Samsung with regards to power and performance, so it may be better suited for some applications.
But for now we don't know how much of this is true and we can only rely on the marketing material.

This year there should be a lot more available wafers due to lack of demand from Smartphone vendors and increased capacity from TSMC and Samsung.
Lots of SoCs which dont need to be top end will be fabbed with N7 or 7LPP/6LPP instead of N5, so there will be lots of wafers around.

Most of the current 7nm designs are far from the advertized density from TSMC and Samsung. There is still potential for density increase compared to currently shipping products.
N5 is going to be the leading foundry node for the next couple of years.

For a lot of fabless companies out there, the processes and capacity available are quite good.

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FEEL FREE TO CREATE A NEW THREAD FOR 2025+ OUTLOOK, I WILL LINK IT HERE
 
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511

Golden Member
Jul 12, 2024
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The yields on N2 must be good, everyone(excluding NV) is using N2 next year.
Yield is proportional to die size though I don't know the die size but if I have to guess AMDs Zen6 will be 100mm2 and below Apple SOC has been 100-125mm2 same with smartphone SoC Intel's 8+16 Should be roughly 100-115mm2
 

johnsonwax

Member
Jun 27, 2024
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Isn’t that because N2 is impossible to ship on time for the iPhone 17s.
According to Dylan from Semi analysis, the earliest one can ship N2 is Q2 2026.
Reporting is still that Apple bought up most of the 2nm production capacity. They wouldn't do that if they didn't have a product to produce on it, and Apple has more than just the A series to work with. I agree that the timing doesn't work for iPhone, and the rumors suggest that it'll be A20 that uses N2, but M5 is expected this year on 2nm. Between iPad Pro and MacBook Pro, they can probably consume all of TSMCs production for this year. And we don't know anything about Apple's M-series derived AI server processor which isn't tied to any product release timetable and could fill in some of that volume as well.
 

jdubs03

Golden Member
Oct 1, 2013
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Reporting is still that Apple bought up most of the 2nm production capacity. They wouldn't do that if they didn't have a product to produce on it, and Apple has more than just the A series to work with. I agree that the timing doesn't work for iPhone, and the rumors suggest that it'll be A20 that uses N2, but M5 is expected this year on 2nm. Between iPad Pro and MacBook Pro, they can probably consume all of TSMCs production for this year. And we don't know anything about Apple's M-series derived AI server processor which isn't tied to any product release timetable and could fill in some of that volume as well.
M5 on N2 would be a big surprise tbh.
 
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Doug S

Diamond Member
Feb 8, 2020
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M5 on N2 would be a big surprise tbh.

If the China Times claim that mass production of N2 starts end of April is real then they'd be able to start shipping Macs using those chips by their usual October/November time frame. But there was also a rumor last month that production of M5 had already begun. We'll find out soon since TSMC's quarterly call is coming up and surely they will say if N2 mass production has started, and/or someone will ask when the first N2 revenue will be recognized. If M5 is N3P as expected then I think there's a very good chance we see M6 arrive in Q2 next year like M4 did.

All I know is that Apple wouldn't prepay for tons of N2 capacity if they didn't have something to utilize that capacity. So if it comes early they'll have something they can make with it, whether it is an M5 surprise on N2, early M6, or a bunch of AI chips that we never get to see. They didn't prepay to sit around watching others get N2 wafers delivered while they wait for iPhone 18 production to start.
 

jpiniero

Lifer
Oct 1, 2010
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If the China Times claim that mass production of N2 starts end of April is real

TSMC said that N2 was on track to start volume production in the second half of 2025, and N2P (as well as A16) second half of 2026. I am taking that as starting production and not delivering chips. So the timeline seems to be fine for the 2026 iPhone, even if N2 only ends up being used for the Pro model.
 

511

Golden Member
Jul 12, 2024
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Do you know or have a guess as to how long the remaining steps between "finished wafer" and "ship to customer to install in their products" i.e. dicing, testing, and InFO-POP packaging would take?
My source is hin and he says it takes couple of months for packing and stuff soo around 5.5 Months total for all the stuff that is long
 

511

Golden Member
Jul 12, 2024
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no one is beating AMD this decade huh. From the looks of it, Zen6 goes even more crazy with advanced packaging
Not really Clearwater Forest has HB with Cu-Cu Bonding in 2026 DMR is using that as well also zen6 packing is at similar level to what is used in meteor lake.
 

Doug S

Diamond Member
Feb 8, 2020
3,083
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Some of those N3P Apple SoCs Dylan mentioned are chiplet based. Looks like Apple using SoIC rumour is true.

Chiplets make more sense for Apple with a changing mix of needs. They had enough volume to justify separate dies for base, Pro and Max but not Ultra, so that was made by connecting two Max dies. Now they have this internal need for a lot of AI servers, but the chip they need for that isn't any of those - using Ultra in that role as reported was a stopgap solution only.

If they split things up into chiplets they can assemble chips in a few variations to serve the Pro/Max/Ultra points (and maybe even justify the long rumored but never delivered higher than Ultra offering) but more importantly for their needs today allow building a chip designed specifically for their AI server needs. Building it out of Ultras was wildly inefficient, with much of the die space wasted on not only on completely useless stuff like display controllers and ISP blocks, but too much CPU, and a GPU which (along with their NPU) is unlikely to be quite exactly what they'd really want for AI servers, display controllers, ISPs and so forth. I wonder if they will modify their GPU to do what is needed for their AI servers or if they'll build an AI specific chiplet that forms the bulk of their AI servers.

I'm also quite curious what they'll do with memory for those AI servers. Will they stick with the LPDDR they have lots of experience with, or will they go HBM? They will have had to buy capacity at least a year ago if they do the latter. The unfortunate thing is that we'll probably only ever have rumors for the configuration of those AI servers, since they aren't customer facing Apple is never going to release much public info about them.
 
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