The chairman of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), Morris Chang, believes that Samsung will be the company's biggest competitor in the production of chipsets using the 7nm fabrication process. According to a report by DigiTimes, Chang noted that despite the competition, TSMC should prevail over Samsung due to its technological advantage. He also noted that Intel could be another competitor in the 7nm field, but says that TSMC has a "very friendly" relationship with the company, in order to ease competition woes. As per the report, TSMC is scheduled to move the 7nm process technology to risk production phase in 2017, followed by volume production in 2018. It is only then that processors fabricated using the 7nm standard would hit the markets, commercially.
During TSMC's annual technology forum in May 2016, company co-CEO Mark Liu revealed that its foundry had already reached 30-40pc yield for 7nm 128MB SRAM. Liu also claimed that TSMC will be the first chipmaker in the industry to have its 7nm technology certified. Further, he indicated that volume production using TSMC’s 10nm process will start by 2017.
Earlier this year, it was reported that TSMC may be the sole manufacturer of processors for the Apple iPhone 7, expected to be powered by Apple's next generation A10 SoC. TSMC has manufactured the A8 chipset used in the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, but had shared the manufacturing of A9 chipsets with Samsung. Meanwhile, Samsung is tipped to start production of its 2nd generation 10nm chipsets by the end of 2016.