TSMC to delay 3nm chip trials

The outbreak of Coronavirus has disrupted the supply chain and logistics severely across the globe. Countries have halted their personnel movement, and as a result, production is delayed. The latest one to be affected by this is the popular Taiwanese Chipmaker, TSMC. Reports say that the company’s trial phase of the 3nm fabrication process is delayed further.

Reports coming in from China indicate that TSMC is forced to delay the trial phase of the new process. The original schedule which was planned in June might get pushed to October this year. This could be due to the pressure the company is facing with orders of current 7nm and 5nm based chips apart from the pandemic.

Delays due to COVID-19 Pandemic

Supply chain assessments say that TSMC had originally planned to complete the trial phase this year. But the current situation has not favoured the company. However, it hopes to mass-produce the chips based on the new 3nm process by 2022. The current situation could still get worse pushing the deadline to Q1 of next year. 

Current Focus on 7nm and 5nm Chips

The Legal Spokesperson of TSMC has pointed out that the company’s current focus is on the 7nm and the latest 5nm processors. However, TSMC has neither agreed to the rumours about the 3nm chipset orders nor has commented on the current status of the process.

Earlier, TSMC had officially introduced the plan of its new 3nm process back in April. The new process aims to increase the transistor density to 3.6 times more than 7nm. Further, the new 3nm promises to give a 15% and 5% boost in performance compared to the older 7nm and 5nm chips respectively.

Nonetheless, the delay in trials could benefit its rival Samsung to catch up. This is because TSMC from Taiwan currently retains the crown of 5nm in the industry. It has partnered with leaders like Apple, Qualcomm, AMD, HiSilicon.

Samsung has thus had dark days so far with its chips failing to meet the demand in quality when it comes to 14nm, 10nm and 7nm processes.  This rang a bell in the investors’ mind and they decided to skip the 5nm process to invest more in 3nm.

When it comes to TSMC, it has already invested up to 1.5 trillion Taiwan Dollars for the 3nm process. It has not disclosed any other info apart from the details of the process so far. It remains to be seen how this delay will affect TSMC in the future.