Apparently TSMC’s 3nm manufacturing process is working great: second EDN Asia, which cites unnamed inside sources, the yield rate of the plant is around 80% – which means that 80 out of 100 chips pass quality control. This is especially good news when you consider that the price of wafers has (again according to rumors) risen quite significantly, from $16,000 to $20,000.
Just to have some points of reference with the yields of recent processes, we cite a few examples below. It should be noted that, unless otherwise specified, the figures are all rumors, never confirmed by the companies involved):
- TSMC 4nm (Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1, Snapdragon 8 Gen 2): over 70%
- Samsung 4nm (Snapdragon 8 Gen 1): around 35%
- TSMC 5 nm (Apple A15 Bionic, A16 Bionic): over 80%, with peaks up to 90% (official figure)
The yield varies a lot – basically for the better – over time: for example it was said that for 4 nm TSMC it was initially just around 50% but that it had already risen to over 70% after a month. The fact that the N3 process is already at such high levels right away is an exceptional result.
This is excellent news for the customers of the Taiwanese foundry, but above all for Apple, which according to rumors has taken over the capacity of the entire node, at least for the first few months. We have seen in the past few hours how the new generation Apple A17 Bionic chip represents a truly significant leap forward compared to the previous A16, and the transition from 5 nm to 3 is largely responsible for it.
Meanwhile it seems that Samsung has also made significant progress on its 3nm node, known as 3GAE which will employ Gate-all-around (GAA) technology. There are no official figures here either, but already at the beginning of the year Samsung had declared the achievement of a “perfect” rate of return. It’s important to put this term into context: in absolute terms it could mean 100% return, but it’s unheard of and nearly impossible; it is much more probable that the aim was to achieve an ideal rate for mass production and subsequent marketing, around 80-90%. Just six months earlier, in the summer when 3GAE was announced, the yield was rumored to be just 10-20%.
