TSMC plans to make 1.6nm chipset to be used in future Apple products: Report 

Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC announced plans to produce highly advanced 1.6nm chips that could be used by Apple for its future chips.

The new technology is reported to significantly enhance chip’s logic density and performance, promising substantial improvements for high-performance computing and data centers, MacRumors reported.

TSMC plans to begin production of its 1.6nm chips to be used in its “A16” processors by 2026. The A16 tech makes use of nanosheet transistors along with a novel backside power rail solution. The new chips are expected to improve performance by 8-10% along with a 15-20% reduction in power consumption at the same speeds compared to TSMC’s N2P process, along with 1.10X chip density improvement.

The chipmaker also announced the rollout of its System-on-Wafer (SoW) technology, which integrates multiple dies on a single wafer to boost computing power while occupying less space.

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Additionally, TSMC is also making progress toward manufacturing 2nm and 1.4nm chips that are likely to be used for future generations of Apple Silicon.

While the 2nm “N2” node is scheduled for trial production in the second half of 2024, it is set to enter mass production only by 2025. The company plans to shift toward production of “A14” 1.4nm chips by 2027.

Apple has been one of the first companies to use new chip fabrication technologies, and it will likely use TSMC’s latest chips in the iPhone, and later in iPads and Macs. Successive nodes produced by TSMC have surpassed their predecessors in terms of density and performance.

Earlier in late 2023, TSMC demonstrated the prototype of its 2nm chips to Apple ahead of their expected launch in 2025.