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Technology nodes from 10 µm to 2 nm

NODE SCALE

10 µm 2 nm

Selected: 7 nm
10 µm 3 µm 1,5 µm 1 µm 800 nm 600 nm 350 nm 250 nm 180 nm 130 nm 90 nm 65 nm 45 nm 32 nm 22 nm 16 nm 11 nm 7 nm 5 nm 3 nm 2 nm

Technology node · 7 nm

7 nm

The 7 nm class marks the transition to EUV lithography in mass production. TSMC brought the first generation (N7) into production in 2018 using conventional 193 nm immersion lithography and multi-patterning – including for Apple's A12 Bionic, Huawei's Kirin 980 and Qualcomm's Snapdragon 855. Samsung followed in October 2018 with the industry's first EUV-based mass-production process (7LPP), ahead of TSMC's own EUV variant N7+, which followed in 2019.

The early IBM demonstrators based on silicon-germanium that had been anticipated in the original article remained research projects; actual mass production was based throughout on conventional silicon with FinFET transistors.

Mass production

In 2018, TSMC began mass production of N7 (193 nm immersion, multi-patterning), including for Apple's A12 Bionic.

In October 2018, Samsung began the industry's first mass production using EUV lithography with 7LPP.

TSMC's own EUV variant N7+ followed in 2019.

7 nm manufacturing became the most important foundation for high-end smartphone processors from 2018 to 2020.