Samsung and Intel have been in the fab game for a while now, but TSMC has been spending around $10 billion per year in order to keep up to, or exceed what their two main competitors are doing. TSMC has announced its building a next-gen 3nm technology plant in Southern Taiwan, but to put it into perspective... 1nm is one billionth of a meter, and measures the width of each transistor in the chip. It's an incredibly intricate process, with TSMC leading the world in many ways.
Morris Chang, founder of TSMC and 86-year-old ultimate boss of the company said: "By the time we're through, by the time we've built all the necessary capacity, I think we would have spent upwards of $15 billion. That's a conservative estimate. Maybe it's safer to say upwards of $20 billion". Don't worry, TSMC won't be going out of business any time soon, as his company is worth a whopping $190 billion.
TSMC's new 3nm plant will be ready by 2022, so expect next-gen Apple smartphones and tablets to rock TSMC's upcoming 3nm node sometime after 2022. 3nm will usher in a 3x reduction in semiconductor size, giving us faster processors that use less power. We should expect quite a leap in smartphone battery life with 3nm, which is the part I'm looking forward to most.
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks