TSMC's Vice Chairman and CEO C.C. Wei confirmed that Volume Production for their advanced 1.6nm Chips will begin in 2026
On Tuesday, Patently Apple posted a report titled "Apple in final stages of verifying TSMC's 'Made in USA' chips for lower-end iPhones+." Today we're learning about TSMC's schedule for their next generation high-end chips.
A new supply chain report posted yesterday notes that TSMC is looking to ramp up production of 2nm chips this year, and pledged volume production of cutting-edge 1.6nm chips for 2026.
Speaking on an analyst conference call to discuss the results of calendar Q4 revenue, vice chairman and CEO C.C. Wei claimed: "We expect 2025 to be another strong growth year for TSMC, and forecast our full year revenue to increase by close to mid-20s percent in US dollar terms."
The past year saw "robust AI-related demand," from AI accelerators including GPUs, ASICs and HBM controllers for training and inference in the datacenter, according to Wei, and he forecast this would double in 2025, as a strong surge in demand continues.
"We expect AI accelerators to be the strongest driver of our HPC platform growth and the largest contributor in terms of our overall incremental revenue growth in the next several years," he said.
TSMC's N2 (2nm) process node is "well on track" for volume production in the second half of 2025, as scheduled, Wei said. This is expected to offer a 10 to 15 percent speed improvement at the same power versus N3E technology, or a 20 to 30 percent power improvement at the same speed, and an increase of more than 15 percent in density.
He also mentioned TSMC's A16 technology, which is scheduled to produce the first 1.6nm chips by 2026. This will be available with Super Power Rail, TSMC's version of the backside power delivery approach detailed by Intel, and the node is to feature a further 8 to 10 percent speed improvement at the same power compared with N2, and an additional 7 to 10 chip density gain.
"Volume production is scheduled for second half 2026," Wei claimed. For more, read the full report from The Register.