According to digitimes, a report by the American think tank CSET shows that the cost of a 12-inch wafer manufactured at a 5nm node is about 16,988 US dollars, which is much higher than the cost of the same specification at a 7nm node of US$9346. If you use 600 square millimeters of die (about the same size as the GA102 GPU used by NVIDIA RTX 3080 and 3090), the cost of each chip for the 7nm and 5nm nodes is about $233 and $238, respectively.

The Tech Spot report pointed out that in addition to the higher cost of 5nm chips because it is a new product, another important reason is that special processing is required. 5nm chips rely heavily on extreme ultraviolet (EUV) technology, and each EUV machine costs 120 million US dollars, which is expensive. The equipment pushes up the cost, and each 5nm wafer may require more than 14 EUV masks.

According to official data, compared to 7nm (the first generation of DUV), 5nm chips can provide 1.8 times the logic density, increase the speed by 15%, or reduce power consumption by 30%. Moreover, the 5nm node is said to have a better yield. Based on these advantages, although TSMC’s 5nm chip is expensive, the market demand is still strong.

The supply chain previously revealed that AMD, Nvidia, MediaTek, Qualcomm and Apple are about to usher in the peak shipping season and have gradually increased 5nm orders. TSMC's 5nm is currently gradually increasing from 50,000 pieces per month. The original monthly production target of 80,000 to 90,000 pieces in the first half of 2021 has recently been raised to 105,000 pieces.