On October 28, it was reported that the mainstream flagship SoC on the market this year was Qualcomm Snapdragon 855, Apple A13 Bionic, Huawei Kirin 990 and Samsung Exynos 9820. The first three had one thing in common. They were all made by TSMC, the world's largest chip foundry company, and used the 7nm process. The smaller the number of manufacturing processes, the more transistors will be in the chip. At present, the flagship SoC has many transistors. For example, Kirin 9905G has 10.3 billion transistors built in.
It is reported that TSMC plans to start producing 5nm process chips next year. Samsung also has chip manufacturing business, and plans to start producing 5nm process chips next year. However, Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 will use Samsung's 7nm EUV process for mass production, and this SoC will be used by several Android flagship phones next year.
According to media reports, TSMC will produce Snapdragon 875 in 2021, which may be the first SoC with 5nm technology in Android phones, while Apple A14 is also likely to be produced by TSMC with 5nm technology, but the iPhone with Apple A14 will be released in the third quarter of 2020.
The more advanced process than 5nm is 3nm. It is reported that TSMC has begun to build some factories that will be used to produce 3nm process chips in 2023. TSMC will spend 19.5 billion dollars to build a factory in the technology park in southern Taiwan Province, which covers more than 74 acres. At the beginning of 2019, Wei Zhejia, CEO of TSMC, said that the development of 3nm was progressing smoothly.
Samsung plans to use its next-generation GAA (Gate all round) architecture to produce 3nm chips from 2021-2022. A source said that Samsung's 3nm process density will not be as high as TSMC's. In other words, TSMC can accommodate more transistors with 3nm chips of the same area, and its performance is stronger than Samsung's.
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