TSMC reveals more info about its 7nm nodes

TSMC released some more public details about its 7nm FinFET process technology. The Taiwanese foundry claims its 7nm node has the industry's most competitive logic density.

Test chips of 256Mb SRAM were manufactured in June 2016 with double-digit yield rates and risk production started in April 2017. Double digit customer tape-outs occurred in 2017 and the first products are expected later this year. Presumably, Apple's next A12 SoC will be made on TSMC's 7nm node, which means these chips will ship in iPhones within a couple of months.

TSMC has two 7nm FinFET nodes; one optimized for mobile chips and a second one for high-performance computing applications. The latter can be used for new NVIDIA and AMD GPUs.

Compared to TSMC's 10nm FinFET process, the 7nm FinFET node offers 1.6x higher logic density, ~20 percent higher performance, and ~40 percent power consumption reduction.