The giants of the chip manufacturing industry are actively competing with the goal of creating the next generation of cutting-edge chips. TSMC, Samsung, and Intel are creating"2 nm"There is a fierce race for chips that will have a major impact on the future of the $500 billion semiconductor industry.
These top semiconductor companies are going all-in on "2nm" processor chips that will power the next generation of smartphones, data centers, and artificial intelligence. While TSMC is still the global leader in the semiconductor industry, Samsung Electronics and Intel are ready to take advantage of the next round of industrial upgrading to close the gap with TSMC.
Chipmakers have been working on the miniaturization of their products. The smaller the transistors on the chip, the lower the energy consumption and the faster the speed. At present, "2 nanometers" and "3 nanometers" have become popular terms for a new generation of chips, and their meaning is not the actual size of semiconductors.
Any company that strengthens its leadership position in the next generation of advanced semiconductor technologies has a good chance of becoming a major player in the global semiconductor industry, which has annual sales of more than $500 billion. This market is expected to expand further as the demand for data center chips for AI services increases rapidly.
TSMC, the global chip market hegemon, is said to have presented the results of process testing of its 2-nanometer (N2) prototype to its major customers, including Apple and Nvidia. And Samsung is also actively attracting customers, offering discounted versions of the latest 2nm prototype, as Samsung sees that 2nm will be an important turning point for the industry.
According to TSMC, mass production of N2 chips will start in 2025, first to meet the needs of mobile devices, then personal computers and high-performance computing chips. TSMC said that their N2 technology is progressing well and is expected to be the industry's most advanced semiconductor technology in terms of density and energy efficiency with mass production in 2025.
However, the cost of transitioning to next-generation processes is increasing and performance gains have peaked, so the transition may no longer be as attractive to customers, and the performance improvement bottleneck of chip miniaturization is on the horizon. On the contrary, for chip manufacturing giants, this is a good opportunity to seize TSMC's market share.
From a global perspective, both Samsung and Intel want to benefit from customers becoming less dependent on TSMC, which may be driven by business factors. However, TSMC still performs well in cost, efficiency, and trust, which is unmatched by other companies, and TSMC's advantages are still obvious.