According to TSMC’s plan, the 3nm process will begin risky trial production in the third quarter of this year, and mass production will begin in 2022. Although it is too early, it is reported that Apple and Intel have become one of the first customers to adopt their 3nm process.

The Nikkei Asian Review quoted several people familiar with the matter as saying that Apple and Intel are using TSMC’s 3nm process to test their own chip designs, and related chips are expected to begin commercial production in the second half of next year.

According to TSMC, compared with the 5nm process, the 3nm process helps to increase computing performance by 10% to 15% while reducing power consumption by 25% to 30%.

The source pointed out that the Apple iPad may be the first processor produced using TSMC’s 3nm process. The new generation iPhone, which will be released next year, is expected to use processors produced by TSMC’s 4nm process due to schedule reasons.

Intel is said to have cooperated with TSMC on at least two 3nm process projects, including designing central processing units for notebook computers and data center servers. A source revealed that the number of 3nm chips currently planned by TSMC for Intel exceeds the usage of Apple's iPad. These chips are expected to begin mass production as early as the end of 2022.

For Intel, the cooperation with TSMC aims to help the company cross this transition period until its internal production technology is on track. Earlier, Intel delayed the release of the 7nm process to 2023. In addition, the company said this week that the release time of Xeon processors using its 10nm process has also been postponed from the end of this year to the second quarter of next year.

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said that the company's relationship with TSMC is a "cooperative and competitive" relationship, that is, a combination of cooperation and competition. Although Intel has officially announced the restart of its foundry business, it also hopes to regain market share from AMD and Nvidia.

In this regard, Intel confirmed that it is cooperating with TSMC on its 2023 product line, but did not specify the specific production process used.