The world’s largest semiconductor manufacturer, TSMC, has reached a critical stage in the 2-nanometer production process. While the Taiwan-based company increases production efficiency with this new process called N2, the significant increase in costs is striking. The per-wafer price determined by the company for its 2nm chips has reached $30,000.

TSMC to start 2nm production process

Before mass production has even begun; demands from major customers such as Apple, AMD, Nvidia, Qualcomm and Broadcom have lined up. The company is expected to receive the first orders from these customers by the end of the year.

According to TSMC’s statements, the price increase is due to the very high investment costs of 2nm factories and new production technologies. An expense of $725 million has been made for the installation of just one 2nm factory.

The efficiency rate, which was around 60 percent in the 2nm process last year, exceeds 90 percent today. This rate shows that TSMC is very close to making the process ready for commercial production. In addition, production is expected to be spread globally, not just limited to Taiwan.

With this process, TSMC is switching from FinFET architecture to GAAFET (Gate-All-Around FET) structure for the first time. Thanks to the new architecture, both power efficiency increases and chronic problems such as leakage current are better controlled.

However, things are not limited to technical advances in the chip world. It is estimated that the cost per wafer can reach up to $45,000 in more advanced processes such as A16 (1.6nm) and A14 (1.4nm), which will follow the N2 process.

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