TSMC, 3 nm ready to go: first Apple customer with M2 Pro and Max | Rumor
Apparently it will be Apple is the first customer to leverage TSMC’s next-generation manufacturing processat 3 nm: according to Commercial Timesthe two giants have agreed to create Apple Silicon M2 Pro and M2 Max, high-performance chips of the new MacBook Pro whose debut is expected already by the end of the year or the beginning of the next.
According to the source, the start of production would be imminent: we talk about next month. A less difficult start is expected than with the transition to the 5 nm process, with higher yields. Later in time, TSMC will probably churn out the Apple A17s that we will find in the iPhones of 2023 and the Apple Silicon M3s, which we will probably find in the future MacBook Air and iPad Pro, are not to be excluded either.
TSMC is relatively late, at least compared to its main competitor Samsung. The South Korean giant delivered the first batch of 3nm chips almost a month ago. However, it should be noted that it was a small start, with a customer operating in the cryptocurrency mining sector – with volumes and criticalities much lower than those of a popular consumer electronics product such as Apple’s laptops.
There is also to specify that nanometers are not everything. We saw it well this year with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, Qualcomm’s flagship chip for the smartphone world: the regular version, produced by Samsung at 4 nm, turned out to be quite disappointing, especially due to the heat and consumption, so much so that Qualcomm has decided to turn to TSMC for the mid-career refresh (i.e. Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1). As we have observed in recent smartphone reviews, for example the ASUS ZenFone 9, the leap forward was perhaps more concrete than in the move from last year’s S888 to S8G1.
