TSMC announced that it will begin trial production of 4nm semiconductors in the third quarter of this year and begin full-scale mass production of 3nm semiconductors in the second half of next year.

TSMC held an online technology symposium from the 1st to the 2nd.

This symposium showcased the latest innovations in advanced logic technology, specialized technologies, and TSMC's 3DFabric™ advanced packaging and chip stacking technology. Also announced were N6RF for next-generation 5G smartphones and WiFi 6/6e performance, N5A for cutting-edge automotive applications, and a wide range of enhancements.

“Digitalization is transforming society faster than ever before, as people use technology to connect, collaborate, and solve problems, overcoming barriers created by the global pandemic,” said Dr. CC Wei, CEO of TSMC. “This digital transformation has opened up a new world of opportunity for the semiconductor industry. Our Global Technology Symposium highlights the many ways we are strengthening and expanding our technology portfolio to drive customer innovation.”

According to the announcement, TSMC plans to begin trial production of its 4nm product, N4, in the third quarter of 2021. N4 has been in development since its announcement at the 2020 Technology Symposium, further improving performance, power efficiency, and transistor density in the 5nm family, while reducing mask layers and providing close design rule compatibility with N5.

TSMC also introduced N5A, the latest member of its 5nm product family. The N5A process aims to meet the growing demand for computing performance in new, more intensive automotive applications such as AI-assisted driving assistance, and cockpit digitalization.

N5A applies the same technology used in today's supercomputers to automotive applications, delivering the performance, power efficiency, and logic density of N5 while meeting the stringent quality and reliability requirements of AEC-Q100 Grade 2 and other automotive safety and quality standards. Supported by TSMC's growing automotive design support platform, TSMC N5A is expected to be available in Q3 2022.

N3, a 3nm technology, is scheduled to begin mass production in the second half of 2022. It is based on a proven FinFET transistor architecture for superior performance, power efficiency, and cost-effectiveness. In addition to being faster, it is expected to consume up to 30% less power than 5nm and offer up to 70% greater logic density.

They also announced N6RF, an advanced radio frequency technology for the 5G era.

N6RF is a process that brings the power, performance, and area benefits of the advanced N6 logic process to 5G radio frequency (RF) and WiFi 6/6e solutions.

The N6RF transistor achieves over 16% higher performance than previous-generation RF technology at 16 nm. Additionally, N6RF enables significant power and area reductions for 5G RF transceivers for both sub-6 gigahertz and millimeter-wave spectrum bands without compromising performance, functionality, or battery life delivered to consumers. It also enhances WiFi 6/6e performance and power efficiency.

We also announced 3DFabric, an integrated solution for 3D silicon stacking and advanced packaging technologies.

For high-performance computing applications, TSMC plans to offer larger reticle sizes for both InFO_oS and CoWoS® packaging solutions in 2021, enabling larger floor plans for chiplet and high-bandwidth memory integration.

Additionally, the chip-on-wafer (CoW) version of TSMC-SoIC™ received N7-on-N7 certification this year and is targeted for production in 2022 in a new fully automated fab.

For mobile applications, TSMC introduced its InFO_B solution, which is designed to integrate powerful mobile processors into slim, compact packages with improved performance and power efficiency, and to support DRAM stacking on packages for mobile device manufacturers.