TSMC Announces Its New N4P Process Node For Manufacturing Chips

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world’s leading contract manufacturer of chips, has today officially announced its N4P process, which is an enhanced version of the company’s 5nm platform.

This new N4P process marks the third enhancement of TSMC‘s 5nm process and is claimed to offer around an 11 percent hike in performance over the original N5 technology and around 6 percent improvement over the N4 process.

As for the power efficiency, the company claims 22 percent better efficiency compared to the original N5 technology and the transistor density is also said to be 6 percent higher.

Talking about this new process, the company said: “N4P demonstrates TSMC’s pursuit and investment in continuous improvement of our process technologies. The process was designed for easy migration of 5nm platform-based products, which enables customers to not only better maximize their investment but will also deliver faster and more power-efficient refreshes to their N5 products.”

A couple of months ago, the Taiwan-based company had announced its plan of delaying the 3nm process node and there’s no update regarding it. This indicates that the next-generation A16 Bionic chipset for the iPhone 14 lineup could be using a 4nm process instead of the rumored 3nm process.

For the initiated, the current-generation Apple A15 Bionic process found in the iPhone 13 lineup is manufactured by TSMC using a 5nm (N5P) process. The upcoming MediaTek Dimensity 2000 SoC is also claimed to be in development using the 4nm process.

Samsung Foundry, the biggest rival of TSMC, is also delaying the release of its 3nm chips which means that the next-generation Qualcomm Snapdragon 898 chipset, which will be powering next year’s flagship smartphones, will be made using 4nm node.

RELATED: 

• TSMC expected to start production of enhanced 3nm chips in 2023
• Intel explains why it is outsourcing chip manufacturing to TSMC
• TSMC announces its plans to build its first chip factory in Japan
• Apple iPhone 14 may not be powered by a 3nm chipset due to TSMC’s production issues
• Apple secures the majority of TSMC’s 3nm production capacity over Intel: Report

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