Earlier this year, Mactrast reported that analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said TSMC would use its 2 nanometer fabrication technology to fabricate the A20 processor expected to be used in next year’s iPhone 18 lineup, and that it would be expensive to manufacture.
Now, China Times reports that while the price increase will be at least 50%, Apple will likely eat the difference by not passing the increased cost on to its customers.
Apple’s latest iPhone 17 series was officially launched recently. The A19 chip uses TSMC’s latest 3nm N3P process. The next-generation A20 enters the 2nm era. The 3nm process of CPUs such as MediaTek and Qualcomm in the Android camp is also coming to an end. Industry sources say that the price of the last-generation 3nm process CPU has increased by about 20% compared to the previous generation. Next year, the 2nm process will increase the price by more than 50%. Coupled with the supply and demand imbalance of memory, hard drives, etc., semiconductor inflation is brewing.
While no figures have been revealed, TSMC’s capital expenditure in developing the new process was huge. And only now are chip yields reaching acceptable levels.
The yield is the percentage of functional chips that can be harvested from each silicon wafer, which is essentially a large, circular disc of chips.
Earlier this year, Kuo stated then that at that time, TSMC was seeing 2nm yields of over 70%.
By using the 2nm process in place of the 3nm process, the chips should prove to have more substantial performance and power efficiency improvements over the A19 chip for iPhone 17 models, which will likely be fabricated using TSMC’s third-generation 3nm process, called N3P.
Moving from the 3nm to the 2nm process allows for more transistors in each chip, boosting performance and offering better power efficiency.
