Taiwan’s Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, better known as TSMC, is celebrating the achievement of 1 billion chips produced with its 7nm manufacturing process.
According to a TSMC blog post, the company has produced 7nm chips for more than 100 products and dozens of different customers. According to the company, the amount of silicon used to manufacture these chips is sufficient to cover 13 city blocks in Manhattan.
The company stated that its 7-nm process was able to achieve “faster high-volume production than any previous TSMC technology. TSMC was also the first company to use Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography (EUV) in the commercial production of 7-nm chips, so the shorter wavelength of EUV light facilitates nano-scale printing on processors.
TSMC, the largest company in the world without any competitor
TSMC is the world’s largest semiconductor manufacturer and supplies some of the largest technology companies such as Apple and AMD. Most of the best graphics cards and at least half of the best game CPUs come from one of TSMC’s factories.
Currently, only three companies in the world have the capacity to manufacture these advanced chips: TSMC, Samsung, and Intel. Although Intel’s recent announcement that its 7nm chips are six months overdue has given both this company and Samsung a boost.
TSMC’s plant in the southern city of Tainan has also started production of 5nm chips destined for Apple’s new iPhones. They are expected to be launched in the second half of 2020, while the company expects its 3-nanometer chips to be ready for mass production in 2022.