Apple’s chip supplier, TSMC, may hit 3nm sooner than we anticipated

Confounding previous speculation, Apple once again appears to be on track to begin the migration to super-fast, low-power 3nm chips in some of its devices in the coming months. TSMC is to supply 3nm chips to Apple starting this year.

Smaller, performer, faster and low power

Apple has been expected to take a trip to 3nm for some time. The new process technology will likely seal Apple’s processor advantage against others in the industry and likely lead to solid performance and battery life improvements in its systems.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has developed a highly advanced N3 3nm manufacturing process. It claims this will offer up to 70% logic density gain, up to 15% speed improvements at the same power and up to 30% power reduction at the same speed in comparison to existing 5nm chips based on its N5 tech. (That’s the current Apple chips).

TSMC also says volume production is expected in 2H 22. Taiwan’s Commercial Times suggests Apple will be the first customer and will begin to deploy these chips in the second half of this year.

That latter report speculates these processors “may” appear in the M2 Pro chip and next year’s A17 iPhone chips, as well as M2 and M3 processors. There is some confusion in that Apple’s new M2 Macs use a variant of the existing 5nm processor, and we have experienced some reports that it will not put new, but will insert upgraded, A-series chips in its iPhones.

Maybe.

All the same there is one possibility that may make sense, which is that Apple will introduce a souped up 13” MBP with the first sight of the 3nm chip, and an equally provisioned iPad Pro in October, coupled with a staggered iPhone release cycle in which the Pro Max smartphone has the new processor while others remain on an improved iteration of the current build.

In the latter fantasy, Apple ships improved iPhones in September with systems equipped with the much faster chip in October, accompanied by a new breed of Mac as it inexorably heads towards the higher end macOS systems for ’23.

Another option is that Apple may ship an M2 Pro chip, possibly in only one Mac model and potentially an iPad to get some real world performance data from these systems as it builds toward wider 3nm deployments next year. Or it may do something completely different.

Apple’s big ambition: Unique, original, better

All the same, the news confirms what we already knew:

Apple is on an incredibly aggressive journey to beat the rest of the PC industry to the psychologically sensitive 3nm processor achievement. It wants to find a way to deliver the most possible performance beats per watt of energy, and it won’t rest until its devices aren’t just unique in design and operating system, but fundamentally unique in terms of the heartbeat inside those devices, which it plans to turn into the most sophisticated and advanced processor money can buy (or at least, the best its money can make).

Yes, it may ship the first 3nm Macs soon. Yes, it’s possible it will shove these things inside an iPad. But it is in my opinion less likely we will see these chips inside the entire iPhone fleet this year. But that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. This is likely to be the big speculation focus for the next few weeks in Apple watcher land, but the big reveal here appears to be that AAPL is about to break the 3nm barrier in mass market systems far sooner than anyone else.

And that’s table stakes for even more expansion in the company’s bid to regain its status in the PC biz.

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