
TSMC Ramps 5nm, 3nm to Pack Over a Quarter-Billion Transistors Per sq mm - DeathArrow
https://fuse.wikichip.org/news/3453/tsmc-ramps-5nm-discloses-3nm-to-pack-over-a-quarter-billion-transistors-per-square-millimeter/
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ksec
>Results were mixed from TSMC first quarter 2020 financial results. Amid
pandemic, the company saw net revenue of $10.31 billion

Mixed? I am not sure how this is mixed considering we knew Consumer
Electronics and Smartphone sales dropped by ~30%. That is the largest market
in terms of unit volume. And yet HPC managed to pick up all of that. I think
this could be a mixed of Amazon Graviton 2 and AMD's EPYC, along with other
GPGPU usage.

7nm is ramping extremely well in all of its variants. 5nm is on schedule, and
despite the constant absurd rumours about TSMC's 3nm is behind schedule, TSMC
remain optimistic they will deliver on time in 2H21, that is basically when
Apple ships iPhone 13.

And there is nothing new, TSMC has stated N3 wont be using GAA for nearly 2
quarters now, and the news and press still refuse to read any investor notes
and comment. Which is annoying as I am not sure what intentions they have when
publishing false claim. ( Not WikiChip they are doing a brilliant job in most
parts)

To me this quarter was much better than expected. And HPC remains an exciting
opportunities. I only wish TSMC will also put more effort into its other non
leading edge node like 28nm . Which seems to be getting competition from
everywhere like SMIC, GF and UMC.

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chmaynard
When I try to wrap my brain around this idea, I get a headache.

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ac29
There is a _lot_ of "stuff" in relatively small areas. For example a cubic mm
(aka μl or microliter) of water has 10^20 atoms:

[https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+cubic+mm+of+water+in...](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1+cubic+mm+of+water+in+atoms)

As another example, the well studied bacteria E. coli is approximately 2 μm^2
[0]. So in the same 1 mm^2 used by TSMC, 500,000 entire living organisms could
be fit.

[0] [http://book.bionumbers.org/how-big-is-an-e-coli-cell-and-
wha...](http://book.bionumbers.org/how-big-is-an-e-coli-cell-and-what-is-its-
mass/)

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chmaynard
Now it's a migraine. :)

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boznz
Wow.. If we ever perfect 3D fabrication..

