Report says Apple, TSMC talk about moving 3nm chip production to U.S.

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One of the good things that came out of the Trump administration has been a focus on U.S. semiconductor production. This led the world's top foundry, TSMC, to open a chip-making fabrication facility in Phoenix, Arizona that is scheduled to come online in 2024 with chips rolling off of the line manufactured using the foundry's 5nm process node.

https://www.phonearena.com/, Nov. 11, 2022 – 

Apple and TSMC discuss moving 3nm chip production to the U.S.

Simply put, the lower the process node, the smaller the transistors employed in the component allowing more of them to fit inside the chip. This is important because usually the higher the number of transistors shoehorned inside a chip, the more powerful and energy-efficient it is. This year, Samsung Foundry will be shipping 3nm chips and next year TSMC will deliver the 3nm A17 Bionic to Apple for the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Ultra.

As an example, the A13 Bionic found in the iPhone 11 series from 2019 was made by TSMC using its 7nm process node and carries 8.5 billion transistors. The A16 Bionic used to power the iPhone 14 Pro models is made by TSMC using its enhanced 5nm process (which is called 4nm) and each chip is equipped with nearly 16 billion transistors. Back in May 2021, IBM announced that it had developed a 2nm chip that would be able "to fit 50 billion transistors in a space roughly the size of a fingernail."

Apple, which accounts for a leading 25% of TSMC's annual revenue, would love to move chip production to an area of the world that isn't as potentially a focus of China's attention as Taiwan is. With China looking to become self-sufficient in chip production, there is always the fear that the country has its sights set on Taiwan. Apple would love to move TSMC's cutting-edge production out of Taiwan and into the states.

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