A 35% gain in the consumption of 3 nm chips?
As with every evolution, this new etching node will make it possible to place more transistors in the same volume, and will thus allow the chips to provide more power for equivalent consumption. Surprisingly, Mark Liu, the leader of TSMC took advantage of the inauguration of the 3nm production lines to discuss a gain of 35% on energy consumption but does not give a figure for the increase in performance. Apple drawing up plans for its own chips (TSMC does not what
burn them), it will be as usual for the firm to place the cursor between a significant gain in power or lower consumption (the team in charge of the chips proposing each year an interesting balance between these two criteria).
The AXX chips have a certain lead in terms of power, and Apple might indeed take advantage to further optimize autonomy during the next evolution. On another side, the 3 nm engraving might also allow to implement new functionalities for the GPU part (including ray tracing hardware acceleration) which seemed planned for the A16 but which have been postponed due to excessive consumption.
Apple should be the first manufacturer to offer 3 nm
As a reminder, Apple is currently TSMC’s largest customer which engraves AXX chips for smartphones, tablets or Apple TV and MX chips for Macs and some iPads. The A16 of the iPhone 15 Pro is engraved in 4 nm according to Apple (TSMC for its part evokes the N4 node as an optimized version of 5 nm
), and the M1/M1 Pro/M1 Max/M1 Ultra and M2 chips are engraved in 5 nm. The switch to 3 nm expected for the M2 Pro/Max/Ultra and the A17 should therefore represent a major technological development and allow an interesting gain, whether for power or energy consumption. Mark Liu also took the opportunity to discuss 2 nm engraving and indicated that the semiconductor industry will grow rapidly over the next decade and Taiwan will play an even more critical role in the global economy.
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