TSMC’s achievement was made after it began manufacturing the 7nm chips back in 2018 and to that end, the chips are currently being used in “well over 100 products” from dozen of clients. Clients that include the likes of AMD, Apple, Qualcomm, and Huawei’s HiSilicon. At least, until September for the latter. Moreover, each 7nm chip contains at least one billion transistors within. Another perspective that TSMC likes to use is that the amount of 7nm chips it has produced is enough to cover the city Manhattan 13 times over.
Of course, the method that TSMC widely credits for helping it achieve its goal is through the use of its EUV lithography technology. That allowed it to print nanometre-scale features with the use of tin droplets and a powerful laser. Naturally, TSMC has already moved forward and is about to begin mass production of its 5nm chips, a die lithography that it completed fabricating back in April 2019. On top of that, a very large portion the new chips have reportedly already been swept up by GPU maker NVIDIA, as a form of security for its next-generation GPU architecture after Ampere, codenamed Hopper. (Source: TSMC via Tom’s Hardware)
