TSMC announces A14 chip manufacturing process
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The world’s leading foundry and chip maker TSMC has announced its A14 logic process at its North America Technology Symposium.
The A14 process is expected to enter production in 2028 with development proceeding well, TSMC said. The A14 process is an addition to TSMC’s roadmap which has previously shown an A16 process due to appear late 2026. But whereas A16 provides backside power distribution A14 will not. A variant of A14 with backside power distribution is expected to arrive in 2029 under the name A14P. High-performance (A14X) and cost-optimized (A14C) versions of A14 would arrive after 2029.
TSMC manufacturing roadmap through A14 in 2028. Source: TSMC.
The A14 will be an all-new manufacturing node that uses a second-generation gate-all-around (GAA) nanosheet transistors. Updated standard cell and IP optimization is to be offered under the NanoFlex Pro brand.
The A14 nomenclature roughly equates to 14 angstrom or 1.4nm, just as Intel’s 18A manufacturing process equates to 18 angstrom. However, manufacturing processes no longer bear any relation to a minimum geometry and are assessed in terms of multiple parameters including minimum line width and pitch and functional density.
Functional density may be expressed as transistors per square millimeter but even that is not complete as some functions scale better than others in different companies’ manufacturing processes.
TSMC said that A14 is a follow-on process to its N2 (nominal 2nm) and benchmarked it against that, rather than against the A16 process.
OpenAI joins Apple as a lead customer for TSMC’s A16 process, says report
TSMC’s N2 volume production was due to start before the end of 2025 but now looks set to begin in 3Q25, enabled by yields have already reportedly reach commercial levels of 60 to 70 percent.
TSMC said that A14 will provide a 15 percent clock frequency improvement at the same power consumption as N2 or up to 30 percent less power consumption at the same clock frequency as N2. TSMC added that the logic density will be 20 percent higher than for N2.
“Our customers constantly look to the future, and TSMC’s technology leadership and manufacturing excellence provides them with a dependable roadmap for their innovations,” said TSMC Chairman and CEO C.C. Wei, in a statement.
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