[Swordmaker]

I DO know Apple has had a big design team on 7nm working on something for years and I don’t think its a chipset or a phone

It actually is a 7nm for the new iPhone and iPad. It’s already in production.

TSMC secures government subsidies and picks site for $12 billion U.S. plant
Tuesday, June 9, 2020 10:24 am

TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd.) has secured government subsidies for a planned $12 billion U.S. chip plant to be built in Arizona. The new plant is designed to allay U.S. national security concerns and shift high-tech manufacturing to America.

TSMC secures government subsidies and picks site for $12 billion U.S. plant

Debby Wu for Bloomberg:

TSMC, the main chipmaker to Apple Inc. and Huawei Technologies Co., has picked a site for the future plant and both federal and state governments have agreed to help make up for the higher cost of fabricating semiconductors in the U.S., Chairman Mark Liu told reporters Tuesday. Negotiations continue over the specifics of those incentives, he said without elaborating or identifying the site’s location.

The decision to situate a plant in Arizona came after White House officials warned about the threat inherent in having much of the world’s electronics made outside of the U.S. TSMC had negotiated a deal with the administration to create American jobs and produce sensitive components domestically for national security reasons. It announced the project just before Washington leveled new restrictions on the sale of chips to Huawei, seeking to contain one of TSMC’s largest customers.

TSMC has set aside land adjacent to its selected plot and hopes to convince its own suppliers to set up operations in the vicinity over time, Liu added.

MacDailyNews Note: According to various reports, the location of TSMC’s new $12 billion U.S. plant will be in the Phoenix area.

[Zathras]

What most people don’t know is there are process and design differences between low power and high power.
Its somewhat the same process but vastly different in complexity.

Apple has not yet came out with a high power design on any process but I suspect they will soon.

If nothing else, they really have no server design platform and that would be a good use of their resources.
Server Farms need to be low power and fast.

[PIF]

TSMC deal sort of sounds like the Wisconsin Foxconn deal which ended up being much different and smaller than originally planed - mainly because suppliers like Corning decided not to move

[Swordmaker]

It actually is a 7nm for the new iPhone and iPad. It’s already in production.

I was actually in error with my comment above. Current production is 5nm.

TSMC on track for 3nm Apple ‘A16’ chips in 2022
Tuesday, June 9, 2020 2:13 pm

Apple-supplier TSMC continues to move right along with its manufacturing processes. The Taiwan-based high-end chip foundry maintains that its 3nm fab project remains on schedule, ready for risk production in 2021 followed by volume production in the second half of 2022.

DigiTimes:

TSMC has already entered volume production for 5nm node, and it is reportedly developing variants for the 5nm process… including a further enhanced 5nm node in addition to 5nm Plus, according to sources at IC inspection services companies and chipmaking materials suppliers.

Malcolm Owen for AppleInsider:

TSMC working on 3nm chipsIf accurate, and based on typical iPhone production schedules, this could lead to the Apple-designed A15 at the absolute earliest or more realistically, the A16 chip in 2022 using the process.

It is thought Apple is using TSMC’s 5nm processes to create the next generation of A-series chips destined for the “iPhone 12” tentatively titled the “A14,” with production scheduled for mid-2020. In April, it was reported Apple increased its chip order for the fourth quarter of 2020, potentially due to an anticipated higher demand for the annual iPhone refresh.

TSMC is also intending to move some of its chip production to the United States, in a factory in Arizona thought to cost $12 billion… with construction commencing in 2021 and chip production expected to start in 2024… [offering] the prospect of some A-series chips being made on U.S. soil. MacDailyNews Take: Amazingly, the reductions in silicon transistors keep on coming in regular intervals:

MacDailyNews Take: Amazingly, the reductions in silicon transistors keep on coming in regular intervals: