TSMC schedules 1.4nm mass production for 2028, targets sub-1nm pilots in 2029

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https://biz.chosun.com/en/en-it/2026/04/20/LBMB76R2VZHFBMTGDJJFQ25PBE/

Taiwan’s TSMC, the world’s largest foundry (contract semiconductor manufacturer), plans to begin mass production of 1.4-nanometer (nanometer, one-billionth of a meter) process semiconductors in 2028, Taiwanese media including the China Times reported on the 20th.

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Reminder that the “nm"-node names do not correlate to any physical feature size directly and have been mostly marketing terms for the last ~20 years. Nowadays, “1.4nm” just means vaguely better than the “2nm” process.

On the “3nm"-node, wikipedia

The term “3 nanometer” has no direct relation to any actual physical feature (such as gate length, metal pitch, or gate pitch) of the transistors. According to the projections contained in the 2021 update of the International Roadmap for Devices and Systems published by IEEE Standards Association Industry Connection, a “3 nm” node is expected to have a contacted gate pitch of 48 nanometers, and a tightest metal pitch of 24 nanometers.

Still impressive, of course, but quite misleading.

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Can’t wait to never be able to afford it

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jeez like aren’t we in just the 3 figure atom point then. Like they might as well measure with number of atoms at this point.

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1nm is approximately 5 silicon atoms

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OP

I don’t think they are anywhere near 1nm in terms of semiconductor feature size:

https://techlevated.com/evolution-of-metal-pitch-in-semiconductor-transistors/

Wikipedia seems to imply that that 1 nm class fabrication processes will have a 16 nm metal pitch:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_nm_process

Don’t get me wrong, it’s mind boggling that we operate on such scales and that semiconductors that use these leading edge processes are somewhat accessible (even with the massive increase in price due to data centre demand). But we’re not anywhere near actual 1nm features.

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thats one direction. Presumably this is at least a circle or square if not a cube or sphere.

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Right, it’s linear just like the headline. It didn’t say 1.4 nm^2 or nm^3

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So its no big deal…. /s

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