Apple's first 2 nm SoC allegedly as early as 2025
After the M4 comes the M5 - and with it a reduced structural width. According to a report from Asia, this could happen as early as next year.
(Image: Apple)
Apple wants to switch to the new 2 nm process from TSMC as quickly as possible. To this end, Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams, the number two behind CEO Tim Cook, was spotted in Taiwan last week, as reported by the Economic Daily News (EDN). According to the report, Apple intends to secure the first SoCs with the new structure width. This would not be new: the iPhone manufacturer has already been TSMC's first customer several times in the past when a new process was set up there. In this case, we are talking about the M5, the successor to the M4, which Apple has so far only used in the iPad Pro. According to EDN, the switch to the 2 nm SoC, which is to be specifically optimized for AI applications, could allegedly take place as early as next year.
TSMC believes it is prepared for the changeover
According to another report from South Korea, TSMC is aggressively promoting its 2 nm process to its customers "for next year". Apple is currently still using the second-generation 3 nm process for the M4. The vice president for process development at TSMC, Zhang Xiaogang, is said to have stated at a forum last week that the development of 2 nm technology is progressing "smoothly". Mass production for 2025 is possible, according to BusinessKorea.
It is still unclear how much more performance with lower power consumption the switch from 3 nm to 2 nm promises. Recently, the performance increases have been rather moderate. The reason for this is that the reduction in structure width only affects the transistors, not other parts of the SoC. It is therefore becoming increasingly difficult to achieve impressive improvements. It is still unclear how the M4 SoCs will perform in the Mac, which should be significantly more powerful than the one in the iPad. M4 Max and M4 Pro are currently expected in the fall - presumably in new MacBook Pro models first.
15 percent more power
There had previously been speculation that TSMC may not be able to start 2 nm production as early as 2025 and will postpone it until 2026. According to BusinessKorea, however, this is not correct. Currently, speed increases of 10 to 15 percent are expected when switching from 3 nm to 2 nm, in addition to an alleged 30 percent reduction in power consumption with the same performance.
TSMC believes that the overall demand for 2 nm is likely to be higher than for 3 and 5 nm. Nevertheless, the Taiwanese company intends to triple its production capacity for the 3 nm process by the end of the year. Even then, not all customer demand will be met.
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