Posted on Friday, June 08 2018 @ 11:02 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
Industry sources told
DigiTimes that TSMC's 7nm process may enter mass production sooner than expected. Clients like MediaTek, HiSilicon and Qualcomm are reportedly pushing the foundry to accelerate its 7nm plans. This is because most of TSMC's major clients aren't interested in the 10nm node, and want to jump straight to 7nm. Volume production of TSMC's 7nm "N7" process is expected in the second half of this year.
TSMC moved its 7nm process dubbed N7 to volume production in the second quarter of 2018. The foundry expects sales generated from the node to account for over 20% in the fourth quarter of 2018 and 10% in all of the year. In addition to mobile devices, server CPU, network processors, gaming, GPU, FPGA, cryptocurrency, automotive and AI are the target applications of the N7.
An improved version of TSMC's N7 technology, dubbed N7 Plus, will adopt EUV lithography technology and become available in 2019, according to the foundry.
