Yes, Apple is expected to be the first large-scale customer to use TSMC’s new 2nm process that uses a new “gate all-around” or GAA manufacturing technique. We said as much in our A20 preview earlier this year.
The Fixed Focus Digital account on Weibo says the new TSMC process delivers a performance improvement of about 18% and power reduction of about 30%.
All that is true (and previously reported) but that does not mean that Apple’s A20 will be 18% faster or use 30% less power!
First, understand that those specs are about a manufacturing process technology and do not apply to every chip made with it. The performance and power efficiency of any processor are the result of many design characteristics, not just the fabrication process.
Second, those are individual figures that require context. When TSMC reports that a new process delivers a performance improvement of 18 percent, what they mean is “a chip made with this new process can run up to 18 percent faster than the identical chip made with our previous process.” And when it says there’s a 30 percent reduction in power use, they’re actually saying, “the same chip running at the same speed will use 30 percent less power.”
It is not both 18 percent faster and 30 percent more efficient at the same time, and those figures would only hold up with like-for-like chip designs, anyway.
