According to Taiwan's "Liberty Times" citing supply chain sources, TSMC has achieved better-than-expected results in the trial production of its 2-nanometer chip technology, with a yield rate of more than 60%. The news suggests that the company is fully prepared to begin 2nm mass production in 2025, which could make it available for Apple's iPhone 18 Pro models the following year.
The semiconductor maker is reportedly conducting risk trial production at its Baoshan factory in Hsinchu, northern Taiwan, which uses a new nanosheet architecture that promises significant advancements over the current 3nm FinFET process. The company plans to transfer this production experience to its Kaohsiung factory for mass production, the report said.
Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo's September report and recent rumors claim that Apple's 2026 iPhone 18 Pro models will entirely use chips made with TSMC's 2nm process and 12GB of memory. Due to cost considerations, the standard iPhone 18 models are expected to continue to use the enhanced 3nm process.
The 2nm process is said to have attracted significant interest from potential customers, especially in the field of artificial intelligence. In fact, the company's CEO Wei Zhejia has noticed that the demand for the upcoming 2-nanometer technology is unexpectedly high, and said that it will expand scale production as soon as possible to meet the higher-end needs of the market.
TSMC's roadmap includes the launch of the A16 process (1.6nm, not Apple's A16) in 2026, which will combine the Super Power Rail (SPR) architecture and nanosheet transistors. Under the same voltage and complexity, SPR is expected to improve performance by 8% to 10%; at the same frequency and number of transistors, it can reduce power consumption requirements by 15% to 20%; depending on the design, chip density can be increased by 7% to 10%.