TSMC 7+ Nanometer Chips Are in High Volume Production With 5, 6 nm in 2020

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TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor) announced that its seven-nanometer plus (N7+), the industry’s first commercially available Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography technology, is delivering customer products to market in high volume. The N7+ process with EUV technology is built on TSMC’s successful 7nm node and paves the way for 6nm and more advanced technologies.

The leading edge is currently at 7+ with about three layers done using EUV. In 2020, TSMC will ramp 5nm in the second half with significantly increased EUV usage of about 15 layers, followed by 6nm ramping at the end of 2020 with about four layers done in EUV, according to Jim Fontanelli, a senior analyst with Arete Research.

N7+ is also providing improved overall performance. When compared to the N7 process, N7+ provides 15% to 20% more density and improved power consumption, making it an increasingly popular choice for the industry’s next-wave products. TSMC has been quickly deploying capacity to meet N7+ demand that is being driven by multiple customers.

N6 will offer 18% higher logic density over N7, and design rules fully compatible with N7 enable customers to greatly shorten time-to-market.

TSMC’s key customers are
AMD at N7+ because of limited wafer availability at 7nm
Huawei, Apple at 5nm followed by Apple
MediaTek at the 6nm node

TSMC’s main competitor is Samsung. Samsung has plans for 6nm EUV next year and 5nm EUV in development with likely volume in 2021.

In 2018, Nextbigfuture covered TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor) taped out its first chip in a process making limited use of extreme ultraviolet lithography.

In July, 2019, Nextbigfuture discussed how EUV chips are basically solved and there will be a rapid progression to 2-nanometer chips within 6 years.