Apple, Intel likely to be first customers for TSMC's 2nm node

Intel is locked in a decades-long competition with its American and Asian rivals

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Intel is locked in a decades-long competition with its American and Asian rivals

Intel and Apple are expected to be among the first customers for TSMC's 2 nanometer chips, when the node goes into production in late 2025.

TSMC plans to begin manufacturing chips using its 2nm process technology (N2) at scale in late 2025, delivering the first batch in early 2026. The N2 process will be TSMC's first to adopt the GAAFET (Gate-All-Around Field-Effect Transistor) design.

According to Asian reports from UDN (and notoriously unreliable DigiTimes), Apple and Intel will be the first customers to use the N2 chips.

The iPhone maker has been TSMC's largest customer by revenue for the last 10 years, using it as a source for the chips in its phones, tablets, and M1-powered laptops.

Because Apple's most recent iPhones and MacBooks use a 5nm chip, there will likely be some interim releases before the N2 processors become available in early 2026.

TSMC's 3nm chips, which Apple is likely to use in the iPhone 14 when it is announced in the autumn, will arrive later this year.

Last year, a report said that the next iPad Pro, also expected to be unveiled later this year, would use 3nm technology.

The current iPad Pro uses the M1 chip, while the upcoming 2022 version is expected to feature Apple's new 'M2' chip.

In Intel's case, reports say it will adopt the 2nm technology in its GPUs and other SoCs.

Analysts from China Renaissance Securities say Intel will likely use N2 for the graphics tile of its next-gen client processor, code-named Lunar Lake.

Intel is expected to use its own 18A node for the CPU tile, which the chipmaker claims is equivalent to a 1.8nm process.

Intel's upcoming Arc GPUs are expected to use TSMC's 3nm and 2nm manufacturing nodes, as it attempts to compete with industry giants Nvidia and AMD.

Intel, Samsung, and TSMC have been competing for years to shrink their chip nodes and raise transistor density, for faster and more efficient chips.

As well as N2, Samsung and Intel plan to launch their own new processes (3GAE and 20A, respectively) in 2023 and 2024.

Given that it will be a brand-new node, N2 is expected to offer tangible advantages over its predecessors. However, TSMC has said very little about what to expect in terms of power, performance, or area/transistor density.