The 5 nm node arrived more punctually than many earlier forecasts had suggested: TSMC began mass production in the second half of 2020, for the first time making extensive use of EUV across up to 14 mask layers. The first products were Apple's A14 Bionic (iPhone 12) and the M1 chip, with which Apple switched to its own ARM-based processors for Mac computers in November 2020. Samsung brought its own 5 nm generation, 5LPE, into mass production in the same year, including for Exynos and Snapdragon chips.
The replacement of FinFET by Gate-All-Around transistors that had been anticipated in the original article did not yet occur at this node – both TSMC and Samsung continued to manufacture their 5 nm generation using FinFET transistors. The transition to GAA did not take place until two node generations later (see the 3 nm article). The widely discussed claim that the 5 nm node would mark the end of Moore's Law also proved incorrect – scaling continued through 4 nm, 3 nm and 2 nm, although with noticeably increasing development costs for each generation.
At that time, Intel did not have its own process marketed under the name “5 nm” – its manufacturing followed a completely separate and repeatedly delayed timeline and was later renamed “Intel 4” and “Intel 3”.
Mass production
In September 2020, Apple introduced the A14 Bionic with the iPhone 12 as the first mass-market chip manufactured using TSMC's 5 nm process.
Apple's M1 followed in November 2020 – the first ARM-based processor in Apple's own Mac computers, also manufactured in 5 nm.
From 2020 onward, Samsung manufactured its own 5 nm chips (5LPE), including for Exynos and selected Snapdragon variants.