The Chip Insider®–TSMC's N2 Production Launch

Summary: TSMC's N2 Production Launch:

Asking if a TSMC production launch will be successful is like asking if there will be a Super Bowl next year. The real question is: How good will it be? With many marquee customers working on validation over the last 3 years or so, TSMC’s N2 is looking like it will be one of the company’s greatest hits…

That said, I give it 65% odds that TSMC's N2 will not be a long-lasting node. That it will eventually be seen as a steppingstone to A16. N2 is a risk-management node similar to … N2 is likely TSMC’s last Front-Side Power architecture, limiting it to a single change item: GAA, while postponing BSP until A16 (Gate All-Around, Back-Side Power). The result is … Does this hurt N2’s competitiveness with Intel’s 18A, which does have BSP? My answer is a strong no… What’s the risk of a TSMC N2 failure with GAA … There are significant differences to TSMC’s and Samsung’s tactical approaches to node strategies based on position differences. TSMC holds the high ground in market share and trust in cadence... To mirror this tactically, Samsung must take on greater risk via … Samsung’s foundry is also tactically mirroring the market vertically to its Galaxy™ smartphone… This vertical also gives Samsung the ability to afford taking on TSMC with higher risk due to its Matrix business integration model…

What about the roughly "$1T design cost” barrier? These companies are not worried about it because they know it’s an analytically constructed fiction… You may recall projections that 28nm would be the last node. That it be only used by a “handful of companies who could afford it” and then there would be no nodes after that. We all know what really happened. 28nm became a big hit, as design costs fell at exponential rates. Design counts have actually risen since then… My recommendation is to ignore all these arguments and simply ask: are chip companies still designing chips? If the answer is yes, you don’t have anything to worry about.

“What you do in life echoes in eternity”
— From the Movie “The Gladiator”