TSMC plans to mass-produce 2nm by 2025 and said it will maintain its technological leadership. However, the news from ASML made Liu Deyin not expect that the "slap in the face" came so quickly. ASML announces the next generation of High NA EUV lithography machines as the last generation of NA.
Therefore, ASML's lithography machine technology is about to come to an end, and TSMC may find it difficult to maintain the iteration of chip manufacturing processes, so it will be caught up or even surpassed by competitors. Has lithography machine technology really come to an end? TSMC's competition is increasing, how to deal with it?
ASML announced that lithography machine technology has reached its end
Advanced lithography machine technology supports TSMC to achieve a breakthrough in high-end process chips of 5nm and 4nm, creating chips of trillions of calculations per second for US giants such as Apple , Nvidia, and AMD.
Samsung is the only chip manufacturer that can keep up with the pace of TSMC's process, but Samsung's process yield rate did not meet the customer's requirements, resulting in Qualcomm and Nvidia successively handed over chip orders to TSMC, which can also show the strength of TSMC's chip manufacturing technology.
However, these leading technologies are largely given by lithography machines. Without lithography machines, even if TSMC masters advanced processes, it is impossible to make chips. It’s like the chef leaves kitchen utensils, the cartographer leaves CAD and other tools. With the iteration of lithography process technology, TSMC can successfully create generation after generation of chips.
ASML is currently the most advanced EUV lithography machine, which uses a 0.33 numerical aperture system. However, EUV lithography machines with a numerical aperture of 0.33 can produce up to 3nm process chips. If you want to build a more advanced 2nm chip, you can only upgrade the numerical aperture to 0.55.
ASML can create the next generation of High NA EUV lithography machines based on this numerical aperture, thus changing the game rules of the chip manufacturing industry.
TSMC said it will obtain a High NA EUV lithography machine in 2024 and build a 2nm chip in 2025, ensuring that 2nm will be the world leader. But is this really the case?
TSMC may be able to successfully purchase High NA EUV lithography machines in 2024, but whether it can ensure that the 2nm chip leads is still a question mark.
Because ASML suddenly announced that the High NA EUV lithography opportunity is the last generation of NA. In other words, after reaching the High NA EUV lithography machine, there will be no more advanced lithography machine processes in the future. Has lithography machine technology really come to an end? If we look at the traditional development path, it may be as ASML said.
But in theory, both X-ray lithography machines and electron beam lithography machines can achieve higher accuracy and resolution than EUV lithography machines. However, in terms of large-scale chip production, there is currently no industrial chain advantage. Therefore, if ASML cannot break through more advanced technologies than High NA EUV lithography machines, this is probably the last generation of technology.
TSMC Liu Deyin did not expect that the "slap in the face" will come so quickly. Once the lithography machine technology cannot continue to make breakthroughs, TSMC's chip process technology will be difficult to improve. How can TSMC ensure its leading position?
So before TSMC mass-produces 2nm in 2025, confident speeches are likely to fail. It doesn't even need to reach 2nm, and TSMC is already behind Samsung at 3nm. Anyone who knows about
knows that Samsung announced the completion of 3nm mass production at the end of June, and since then, Samsung has completed the delivery of the first batch of 3nm chip orders. More than that, Samsung 3nm adopts a GAA architecture, and has better performance in performance improvement and power consumption reduction, which is no less than TSMC 3nm's theoretical performance.
TSMC's competition variables increase, how to deal with it?
What TSMC doesn't want to see still happened, and its competitors are accelerating their catching up. Although TSMC has maintained its leading chip manufacturing technology for decades, with the arrival of the limit of Moore's Law and the coming of ASML lithography machine technology, it is estimated that TSMC cannot guarantee that it can always maintain its first position.
Once competitors obtain more advanced technology than TSMC, and their yield and production capacity reach comparable levels, TSMC customers will have the idea of reducing TSMC's order dependence.
TSMC's competition variables are increasing. On the one hand, Samsung is pressing step by step, taking the lead in mastering 3nm mass production, and having more time to improve process yield. On the other hand, Intel will become the first customer of High NA EUV lithography machine, and have formulated a long-term process plan, with the strong support from the United States behind it.
TSMC's first throne is watched by many manufacturers. In the past, TSMC's energy has broken through generations of process technology with EUV lithography machines. In the future, TSMC's breakthrough speed has slowed down. How should TSMC deal with it in many competitive variables?
In fact, TSMC is also reducing its dependence on traditional chip processes and betting on advanced packaging industry. When the chip performance reaches a certain limit, the layout, layout control of the integrated circuit in the device can be changed through special packaging technology, and even the core particle technology is used to stack multiple small chips in , bringing continuous performance breakthroughs.
TSMC is currently vigorously laying out 3D packaging and has also created an M1 Ultra for Apple through advanced packaging technology. This chip is built using TSMC's advanced packaging process, combining two M1 MAX stacks to achieve stronger performance, with a maximum of 114 billion transistors.
So when TSMC cannot go further in the traditional process, it is likely to take the advanced packaging path and extend its competitive advantage. As for achieving such an effect, we need to wait and see.
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