Es ist leider nicht möglich. Apple wird auch dieses Jahr keine 2-nm-Chips bekommen.

All flagship mobile phones in 2025 are not equipped with 2 - nm chips.

The A19 and A19 Pro - series chips of the iPhone 17 use TSMC's N3P process. The upcoming MediaTek Dimensity 9500 and the fifth - generation Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Extreme Edition will also use this process.

Without any warning, MediaTek has brought a surprise.

Recently, MediaTek officially announced that the 2 - nm chip (Dimensity 9600) has completed the design and production sample phase and is thus among the first companies to apply this technology. Mass production is expected to start at the end of next year. Remarkably, they announced this progress a full year before mass production. This lead is really remarkable.

Considering the release times of new products from major mobile phone manufacturers, by the end of 2026, in addition to the 2 - nm Dimensity 9600, the Apple A20 series, the sixth - generation Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Extreme Edition, and the Samsung Exynos 2600 will also introduce the 2 - nm process.

It is certain that the "hot war" over 2 - nm technology will fully begin in 2026. TSMC and Samsung have been preparing for 2 - nm technology for years. Why wasn't the A19 chip of the Apple iPhone 17 manufactured with 2 - nm technology? And why didn't the "2 - nm war" take place this year?

01 No one would have thought that the demand for 2 - nm chips is higher than that for 3 - nm chips

At the earnings conference on October 17, 2024, TSMC CEO Wei Zhejia described the demand for 2 - nm chips in two sentences: "Very, very high" and "I never thought the demand would be higher than that for 3 - nm chips."

Here comes the question: TSMC only started accepting orders for 2 - nm chips on April 1 this year and only began mass production in the second half of the year. Why could Wei Zhejia predict the demand for 2 - nm chips as early as October 2024?

"TSMC has a very first - class market research team that can summarize the demand from all industries worldwide, including the demand from Nvidia, Tesla, AMD, etc.," says former TSMC fab builder Wu Zihao. "It takes about 4 years to build a manufacturing plant. This includes capacity expansion planning. Fabless companies like Apple and Nvidia naturally have to give order forecasts."

Wu Zihao also reveals that from the perspective of fabless companies, not only must pre - production be planned in advance, but also research and development must be adapted to the platforms and technologies of wafer fabs. These are also sources of demand information.

In addition, the capacity forecast clause in wafer manufacturing agreements requires that customers of the wafer fab give a reasonable order forecast to enable the fab to plan capacity reasonably. This also partially reflects the demand status of fabless companies.

According to data from TrendForce, Apple, AMD, Nvidia, MediaTek, and others have already reserved capacities for TSMC's 2 - nm chips. A large part of these companies are among TSMC's top ten customers. Apple even contributed 25.18% of TSMC's revenue in 2024 and thus became TSMC's largest customer.

Among the above - mentioned customers, MediaTek has already announced the mass - production time. According to the release plans of mobile phone manufacturers, it is very likely that Apple will be the first to obtain TSMC's 2 - nm capacities. AMD announced in April, when TSMC released the capacities, that it will introduce the 2 - nm process in the next generations of EPYC data - center processors codenamed "Venice".

For Nvidia, Rubin is already being manufactured with 3 - nm technology. Rubin Ultra consists of four GPU dies integrated in a single package. The package size cannot be further increased. Therefore, the 2 - nm process will also be introduced.

An insider revealed that Bitmain is also a customer of TSMC's 2 - nm process. It is possible that Bitmain will be the world's first fabless company to use TSMC's 2 - nm chips. "ASICs for mining devices are relatively easy to manufacture. The introduction of new technologies can serve as practice. Bitmain could deliver in the second half of the year."

Compared with TSMC, there is less information about the customers of Samsung's 2 - nm technology. Apart from its own Exynos 2600, which will receive the label "World's first 2 - nm chip", there are rumors that Qualcomm may return to Samsung for the 2 - nm technology.

The unprecedentedly high customer demand is mainly based on the performance improvement achieved by the jump from 3 - nm to 2 - nm technology.

TSMC announced the parameters of the N2 node early on - compared with the first N3E, the transistor density increases by 15%, the performance at the same power consumption increases by 10 - 15%, and the power consumption at the same performance decreases by 25 - 30%.

MediaTek's press release about the "lead" in 2 - nm technology essentially confirms the accuracy of these data. MediaTek stated that TSMC's improved 2 - nm process technology increases the logical density by 1.2 times, increases the performance at the same power consumption by up to 18%, and reduces the power consumption at the same speed by about 36% compared with the existing N3E process technology.

In summary, the performance improvement through 2 - nm technology prompts the most important fabless companies to test this technology. However, the mass - production times of the major manufacturers are mainly in 2026.

02 TSMC has failed

The reason why the flagship mobile phones in 2025 are not equipped with 2 - nm chips is that TSMC has failed.

According to TSMC's plan, the 2 - nm capacity should be available in mid - 2025. Currently, everything is going as planned. However, there is too little time for mobile phone manufacturers that want to start mass - producing 2 - nm chips in 2025.

"It takes several months to manufacture prototypes and return the wafers. After the return, the functions and performance still need to be optimized. This usually also takes several months," says a chip designer.

This means that even a large customer like Apple, which completed the prototype manufacturing and testing of the A20 chip at the end of 2024, can only start mass production in June this year. This does not fit into the planning period for the preparation of the iPhone 17, as Foxconn's production lines also need to be in operation.

Yield is another factor why mobile phone manufacturers are not using 2 - nm chips this year. However, this factor has less influence than the mass - production schedule. The sensitivity of different fabless companies to this factor also varies.

With the 3 - nm technology, the yield was only about 60% in the initial phase. Only later did the N3E and N3P improve to over 80%. A similar process will also occur with the 2 - nm technology.

"The yield when new products are introduced could already be over 70% and slowly increase. Next year, it could rise to 80%," estimates the above - mentioned insider.

In the initial phase, the yield is low and the prices are relatively high. Price - sensitive customers will only plan mass production when the yield has increased. Moreover, they use the "wafer - purchase" model. Otherwise, the more products are produced, the more losses will be incurred. However, price is not an absolute obstacle.

Take Apple as an example. Apple has signed a "finished - product - purchase" agreement with TSMC and only pays for functioning chips. As long as the yield is not extremely low, price will not be a decisive factor. However, analyst Guo Mingji from Tianfeng Securities has a different opinion. He believes that the procurement costs of Apple's finished products actually include the costs of defective chips.

"The best example is that the costs of new processors in new iPhones increase sharply every year. This also applies to the A17 this year," says Guo Mingji.

03 The war for wafer manufacturing

Overseas wafer fabs are currently all working on the mass production of 2 - nm chips. However, there are slight differences in the node nomenclature, including N2, 20A, SF2, 2nm, etc. However, all have "uniformly" adopted the new GAA transistor architecture and have planned to use back - side power delivery technology in the subsequent iteration.

In addition: Back - side power delivery can separate the power supply lines and signal lines and relocate them to the back of the integrated circuit, thereby reducing resistance, increasing transistor density, and improving performance.

Regarding the mass - production schedule, Samsung, TSMC, etc. are basically following the schedule. In contrast, Intel, which was originally the most aggressive, planned to release the 2 - nm capacity by the end of 2024. However, due to technological challenges, management changes, and other factors, it finally canceled the 2 - nm process (20A). The 18A (1.8 nm) will not accept any new external orders in the short term and will instead focus entirely on the 14A (1.4 nm) process.

Regarding the specific capacity, TrendForce announced that TSMC is expected to have four 2 - nm wafer fabs in full operation next year, which corresponds to a total monthly capacity of 60,000 wafers.

The above - mentioned insider says: "Fab 20 in the Hsinchu Science Park has a monthly capacity of at least 60,000 wafers. Fab 22 in Kaohsiung is expected to have a monthly capacity of 30,000 wafers. Next year, the monthly 2 - nm capacity will be at least 90,000 - 120,000 wafers."

Regarding Samsung's capacity, TrendForce cited data from SEDaily in April and stated that the monthly capacity for 2 - nm chips is 7,000 wafers.

The year 2025 is a key moment for the release of 2 - nm capacity. However, this war for wafer manufacturing can be traced back several years.

In October 2021, Samsung announced the development of 2 - nm technology at its annual manufacturing conference and announced the corresponding schedule and technology roadmap. TSMC was even earlier. In June 2019, it informed the public about the start of research and development. It announced at the Global Technology Forum that it would establish a new research and development line for 2 - nm technology and deploy more than 8,000 engineers.

Overall, the research and development of 2 - nm technology at leading wafer fabs takes between 4 and 6 years. In this phase, the annual research and development capital expenditure of wafer fabs is usually over 1 billion US dollars. TSMC even invested 3.6 billion US dollars in 2022.

The enormous research and development investments are not only reflected in the technology solutions but also in the race for research and development facilities. A typical example is the race for the ASML High NA EUV lithography machine.

In 2022, Samsung tried to obtain advanced lithography machines by having Lee Jae - yong visit ASML. In the end, however, Intel acquired the world's first High NA EUV lithography machine for almost 400 million US dollars at the end of 2023. In 2024, Intel received another machine of the same type.

Compared with Intel and Samsung, TSMC is rather conservative in the race for the best facilities. It was initially unimpressed by the attempts of ASML managers to make contact and offer advanced lithography machines. In the face of competition from its competitors, Wei Zhejia also visited ASML in 2024. There are rumors that TSMC has received a "package deal" from ASML - a price discount for the High NA EUV lithography machine, but with the purchase of some older