Taiwan's United Daily News is reporting that during TSMC's press conference held earlier today, TSMC's president Wei Zhejia stated that TSMC's 2nm progress is better than originally expected, and the risk trial production will be maintained in 2024, and mass production will be in 2025, and the current progress is good.

In addition, Wei Zhejia mentioned that 3nm applications come from smartphones and HPC. In addition, although the global consumer shipments of mobile phones will decline in the short term, the content of semiconductors will continue to increase, and TSMC will continue to provide more value. At the same time, the demand for vehicles will continue to increase and become tight.

It was revealed last year that TSMC's 2nm will introduce an all-new process technology platform. The 2nm N2 will introduce two essential innovations: nanosheet transistors (which is what TSMC calls its GAAFETs) and backside power rail that both serve the same goal of increasing performance-per-watt characteristics of the node.

GAA nanosheet transistors feature channels surrounded by gates on all four sides, which reduces leakage; furthermore, their channels can be widened to increase drive current and boost performance or shrunken to minimize power consumption and cost.

To feed these nanosheet transistors with enough power and now waste any of it, TSMC's N2 uses backside power delivery, which the foundry considers to be among the best solutions to fight resistances in the back-end-of-line (BEOL).

TSMC's nanosheet-based N2 node will boast of a 10% to 15% higher performance at the same 3nm power and complexity as well as a 25% to 30% lower power consumption at the same frequency and transistor count when compared to their 3nm chips.

Should Apple maintain their numeric iPhone branding in 2025, 2nm chips should be powering their iPhone 17 Pro models.

The core of today's press conference covered the company warning that first-quarter revenue would drop as much as 5% and it would slash annual investment as the major Apple Inc supplier expects softer demand due to a slowing global economy.

According to Reuters, the bearish outlook follows a forecast-beating 78% jump in fourth-quarter profit, underscoring the depth of a sharp slowdown in a global technology sector that is grappling with worsening consumer demand brought about by decades-high inflation rates, rising interest rates and an economic downturn.

Still, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd (TSMC) , the world's most valuable chipmaker, forecast growth would return in the second half of this year.

"We forecast the semiconductor cycle to bottom sometime in first half and see a recovery in second half 2023," CEO C.C. Wei said, adding the rebound would be boosted by new product launches such as artificial intelligence-enabled goods. For more, read the full Reuters report.