TSMC's plans for the next couple of years remain largely unchanged as the company is ready to mass produce chips on its N2 (2nm-class) manufacturing t

TSMC's says 1.6nm node to be production ready in late 2026 — roadmap remains on track

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2024-11-22 17:00:06

TSMC's plans for the next couple of years remain largely unchanged as the company is ready to mass produce chips on its N2 (2nm-class) manufacturing technology starting in late 2025 and A16 (1.6nm-class) fabrication process in late 2026, the company announced at its Open Innovation Platform (OIP) 2024 conference here in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

"The roadmap you see here is pretty much the same, actually it is the same technology roadmap that I think you saw during the [technology] symposium six months ago," said Dan Kochpatcharin, Head of Design Infrastructure Management at TSMC. "[…] We have N2, N2P, which is coming [to] productions next year and the year after. And then [they are] followed by A16."

The words 'followed' and the slide showing A16 after N2P and N2X was somewhat confusing to me. On the one hand, the slide TSMC shared is very similar to the one it presented back in May. On the other hand, the message sent back then was that A16, N2P, and N2X would be available around the same time, so I asked TSMC's heads of the PR department to clarify.

Indeed, all of these process technologies are slated to be ready for high volume manufacturing (HVM) in late 2026. This is, of course, as far as TSMC would go in official comments, as the company will not pre-announce products for its alpha customer(s) that are set to arrive on the market sometime in 2027. So, let us speculate about the positioning of these manufacturing processes.