TSMC starts construction of 3nm fab

After its previous $4 billion investment to meet the demand for 7nm and 5nm, there are reports of another $19.5 billion from TSMC to build a new 3nm factory in Taiwan by 2020. 

TSMC has been one of the companies at the forefront of semiconductor manufacturing, investing in factories for its production and R&D manufacturing processes. To expand the company into the upcoming 3nm era, TSMC's spending $19.5 billion to build a new fabrication facility in the same area of its nearly finished 5nm fab, the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan, Taiwan. It's expected that the new 3nm manufacturing process will be using EUV technology, per TSMC's 7nm+ and 5nm processes.

The new 3nm fab had its environmental evaluation approved, but there's still some work regarding water and electricity supply. The construction is planned to start by 2020 and the fab is expected to start mass-production by late 2022 or early 2023, as reported by CNA.

The company is currently working on bringing the 5nm process node into mass-production, and it's expecting to achieve that status next year. With this, TSMC has been using a maximum of 2-year cadence for its nodes since 2014. That's about to change with the leap from 5nm to 3nm, increasing the cadence to 3 years (2020-2023).

KitGuru says: TSMC's investments are keeping the company ahead of its competition in terms of node's process. Intel, for example, had some difficulties pushing 10nm products into the market. Meanwhile, TSMC is already producing 7nm+, about to begin 5nm, planning the jump to 3nm, and starting the R&D on 2nm. How do you think the competition will react to TSMC's situation? Intel already is.

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