TSMC

Type: Company (Semiconductor foundry, Hsinchu, Taiwan) Full name: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company

TSMC is the substrate company. Every advanced AI chip — NVIDIA Rubin, Apple A20, hyperscaler custom ASICs — runs through TSMC's process nodes and CoWoS packaging. N2 (2nm) entered mass production Q4 2025 with 65–75% yield and Apple taking over 50% of initial capacity. A16 (1.6nm) with Super Power Rail targets late 2026 volume production and is NVIDIA's Feynman node. Meanwhile TSMC's logic processes (12FFC, N5, N3P) are the new home for HBM base dies — memory is becoming a logic product.

Key Contributions

• N2 mass production Q4 2025 — first Nanosheet GAA node in volume. (TSMC Angstrom Era)
• 65–75% N2 yield — ahead of Samsung and Intel. (TSMC Angstrom Era)
• A16 (1.6nm) with Super Power Rail, late 2026 — backside power delivery. (TSMC Angstrom Era)
• CoWoS-L packaging — enables HBM4/HBM4E integration with 2nm logic. (TSMC Angstrom Era)
• HBM4 base dies on TSMC 12FFC / N5 / N3P — "memory becomes a logic product." (HBM4 Shakeup)

Key Customers

Risks & Constraints

• Geopolitical concentration in Taiwan (Arizona fab expansion only partial mitigation).
• A16 wafer cost ($45–50k each) bifurcates the market.
• CoWoS packaging bottleneck — TSMC committed $56B capex to double CoWoS for Rubin-era demand.

Mentioned In

• Nanosheet GAA Transistor — N2/A16 are the flagship nodes
• HBM4 Memory Architecture — base dies on TSMC logic processes
• Rack-Scale AI Compute — CoWoS packaging substrate