Quote:At the start of this year we heard that TSMC was investing heavily in 5nm fabrication, and it's no secret that the next step after that is TSMC's 3nm process.The Taiwanese silicon manufacturer is looking beyond that process too, as it just announced to shareholders that it is starting development of its 2nm lithographic process, as spotted by DigiTimes.

Painstakingly few details are available about the 2nm process. All we know is that TSMC is starting development -- though it's safe to assume the end product will be very fast and more efficient than anything on the market today.

Quote:TSMC is also working to define its next node beyond N3 and shared some of the industry advances that could help it move beyond 3nm, but didn't provide any specifics of which technologies it would employ. TSMC listed nanosheets and nanowires among the advances, along with new materials, like high mobility channels, 2D transistors, and carbon nanotubes as candidates that it is already researching.

TSMC has more than 15 years of experience with nanosheet technologies and has demonstrated that it can yield working 32Mb nanosheet SRAM devices that operate at 0.46V. TSMC has also identified several non-silicon materials suitable for 2D that could scale channel thickness below 1nm. The company is also working with carbon nanotube devices.