Consider: At a time when shrink times became the norm, TSMC did exactly the opposite and postponed mass production of its first 7nm process for an earlier date.
As demand continues to grow for small manufacturing processes, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is aggressively advancing its program. This is an extremely rare event as foundries have struggled to overcome the challenges of producing tiny transistors.
Some of TSMC's major customers that generate sufficient demand to bring about a change in schedule are Qualcomm, Xilinx, Nvidia, MediaTek and HiSilicon. Among these customers, many are interested in completely skipping the 10nm process. Jumping up to 7nm could save money on product development costs that could quickly and easily be outperformed by competitors using the smallest processing technology.
Nvidia has already confirmed that TSMC will be a partner for the production of 7nm chips. Even though rumor has it that the GTX 1180 is using 12nm FinFETs, we will have to wait until August to receive more information on upcoming graphics cards.
TSMC's first 7nm process called N7 is now scheduled for mass production in the second quarter of 2018. This means that N7 is essentially ready for mass production now, but could still have some minor tweaks before end of the month. ]
TSMC will already turn to the successor of its N7, N7 Plus process. The improved 7nm process is based on EUV lithography and is expected to be ready by 2019.
Despite the fact that the 10nm process has a relatively short life cycle, it did not stop AI developers, FPGA designers and Apple from placing orders. Engineers working on mobile SoC chips have benefited from the 12nm technology, now cheaper, available to build more efficient and affordable smartphones chips.
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