TSMC's 3nm Process Update N3P Node to Enter Mass Production in 2024

TapTechNews May 17th news, TSMC recently held a technical seminar, indicating that its 3nm process node has been on the right track, N3P node will be put into mass production in the second half of 2024.

N3P is based on the N3E process node, further improving energy efficiency and transistor density. TSMC said that the yield of the N3E node has been further improved and is already comparable to the mature 5nm process.

TapTechNews queried relevant reports, and TSMC executives said that the N3P process has currently completed quality verification, and its yield can be close to that of N3E. As an optical microlithography process, N3P is compatible with N3E in terms of IP modules, design rules, EDA tools and methods, so TSMC said that the entire transition process is very smooth.

The key advantage of N3P lies in the enhanced specifications it brings. Compared to N3E, chip designers can expect a performance improvement of about 4% at the same power consumption, or a power reduction of about 9% at the matching clock. For a typical chip design consisting of logic, SRAM and analog components, the transistor density is also increased by 4%.