TSMC Aims for Trillion-Transistor Milestone in 3D Chips by 2030

By 2030, TSMC intends to deliver over 1 trillion transistors in 3D-packaged circuits and 200 billion in monolithic devices.

TSMC Plans to Integrate Over 1 Trillion Transistors in 3D-Packaged Chips by 2030

TSMC displayed a roadmap of what the company anticipates its semiconductor "portfolio" to look like during the IEDM 2023 conference, and it appears that the Taiwanese conglomerate has some lofty goals for the end of this decade, according to Tom’s Hardware.

According to the roadmap, TSMC is confident that its processes are on track, with the introduction of TSMC's N2 and N2P processes set for 2025-2027, and cutting-edge A10 (1nm) and A14 (1.4nm) processes scheduled for 2027-2030. Aside from process reduction, TSMC intends to make significant advances in other semiconductor technologies, establishing a standard for the industry to follow.

The most interesting element here is that the Taiwanese conglomerate has shown breakthroughs in two crucial fields of the semiconductor industry: monolithic designs and 3D Hetero Integration (or, in layman's terms, chiplet designs). The industry is moving toward chiplet arrangements because they provide adaptability and cost savings.

The Future of Semiconductor Industry, Led by TSMC and Intel's Innovations

AMD has been using TSMC chiplet designs in its newest consumer, data center, and now MI300 accelerator chips. Intel also announced its Meteor Lake processors, the blue team's first chiplet-design for consumer platforms, implying that chiplets are the way of the future, with TSMC one step ahead, as per WCCFTech.

Meteor Lake is powered by processors manufactured using TSMC's manufacturing technology. According to the business, 3D Hetero Integration would have "one trillion transistors" by 2030.

TSMC does not appear to be abandoning monolithic arrangements, since the recent release of NVIDIA's Hopper H100 GPUs witnessed a significant increase in the "complexities" of monolithic processors, although they are clearly not sustainable in the future. This is why, according to the content presented by TSMC at IEDM, monolithic designs will eventually be limited to 200 billion transistors, which, while a large number, falls short of what chiplets offer.

TSMC's plan for the coming years undoubtedly includes innovation with enormous industry potential. It also suggests that the semiconductor markets will migrate toward chiplet-based designs, which is an interesting prospect in and of itself.

Photo: Briáxis F. Mendes (孟必思), CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons