TSMC’s CEO announced today that the company will be the first to develop a 7 nm chip over the following years. It’ll be certified as the very first and Apple’s solid CPU partner mentioned that they intend to spend $2.2 billion on research this year.
The top 10 chip design makers are said to be spending $20 billion this year, too, so expect big progress to be made, particularly with Intel becoming irrelevant. TSMC’s 16 nm Apple Axx chip was used on the iPhone 6S last year, but Samsung went ahead and made a 14 nm version. Not to be outdone, TSMC now has a 10 nm chip developed and ready to be finalized in 2017.
7 nm is the next step, with improved memory access, power usage, general power and of course, taking up less space in the assembly. TSMC also wants to make a bigger name for itself in the wireless microcontroller field and wireless chips in general, where Qualcomm and the likes are a big deal.
via technews.tw
