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

[DisEnchantment]

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.

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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.

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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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[Doug S]

Company acts surprised pikachu that after almost a decade of lying about their manufacturing progress... people won't believe them even when telling the truth. We used to teach kids about this, read them fables about boys and wolves.

Not really sure what the PR team can do. They aren't really set up to be telling people "yes things are going well with 18A, this isn't like how we lied about 10nm for years and a bunch of times since!" People don't want to hear that from the PR office, they want to hear it from the engineers putting their reputations on the line.

Boeing's PR has the same issues, they aren't the ones you want to tell you that the MCAS fixes are solid. You want to hear that from the engineers - especially if you could hear from the ones who were trying to raise the alarm over the issues in the past and were ignored.

 

[coercitiv]

People don't want to hear that from the PR office, they want to hear it from the engineers putting their reputations on the line.

Don Soltis is one of those engineers, when he held up that chip he expected the audience to understand he's got a reputation to uphold. He's not some random talking head. Here's the catch though, others have burned this bridge before him. Sometimes reputations can be sacrificed.

 

[Hulk]

I don't trust ANYTHING Intel says. Only what is on the shelves.

 

[dangerman1337]

TSMC Accelerates 1.4 nm Plans, Targets 2027 Pilot Runs

TSMC has quietly accelerated the start of construction on a large new complex designed to produce 1.4 nm wafers, ramping up plans for a multi-building site known as Fab 25. The facility, which will be located in the Central Taiwan Science Park near Taichung, is expected to include four...

www.techpowerup.com

Hmmmmm, could AMD be wanting Zen 7 launch sooner than later? If I was them I'd do Zen 7 X3D day 1 and just have Zen 6 in the mean time be more budget orientated with maybe Zen 7 non-X3D months after X3D launching.

 

[511]

TSMC Accelerates 1.4 nm Plans, Targets 2027 Pilot Runs

TSMC has quietly accelerated the start of construction on a large new complex designed to produce 1.4 nm wafers, ramping up plans for a multi-building site known as Fab 25. The facility, which will be located in the Central Taiwan Science Park near Taichung, is expected to include four...

www.techpowerup.com

Hmmmmm, could AMD be wanting Zen 7 launch sooner than later? If I was them I'd do Zen 7 X3D day 1 and just have Zen 6 in the mean time be more budget orientated with maybe Zen 7 non-X3D months after X3D launching.

bruh it's pilot production aka Risk Production which always happens before HVM the timelines have not changed H2 28 is the HVM data