TSMC ushers in its 3nm era of chip production

TSMC has been having a very busy year, especially where headlines are concerned. Between its differing views with the U.S. government and the eye-catching win of NVIDIA’s contractual interests, it’s had no shortage of high-profile news surrounding it. And it’s once again making the front page now that its 3nm pilot production program is officially underway, signaling the company is upping its chip game once again.

Though the pilot production phase is going on right now, TSMC isn’t expected to hit volume production with its 3nm process until the final quarter of 2022 (via DigiTimes). Coincidentally, that’s right around the time NVIDIA’s RTX 40-series GPUs should be going wide in the market, so long as circumstances permit and the great chip shortage doesn’t continue to ravage the world’s various tech industries.

For those not in the loop, all this chip production news comes at a time when most companies are dealing with shortage issues that are backing up supply chains by weeks and months. Evidence of this can be found in companies’ earnings reports, such as Microsoft admitting Surface revenue took a hit due to such factors and Lenovo saying it wasn’t able to ship as much product as it wanted.

Some tech is immune to the harshest effects of the shortage, such as GaN chargers. Navitas Semiconductor gave insight as to why that is and the difference between energy processing technology and data processing technology. But for most of the hardware PC enthusiasts care about, such as the best graphics cards, TSMC and co. will need to be at the top of their game and continue to innovate to fix the current global situation.