TSMC received an order from Tesla to make chips for automakers at the company’s Arizona factory. Digi Times Claim. The foundry will reportedly produce Tesla’s advanced self-driving chips in one of his N4 (4nm class) manufacturing processes from 2024.
Tesla will reportedly be one of the first and largest customers at TSMC’s Fab 21 in Arizona. The report vaguely indicates that Tesla plans to create an “advanced self-driving chip” in his N4, but not what system-on-chip (in the plural he is SoC) it will be. not clarified. Speculation isn’t necessarily good business, but it’s very likely that Tesla will use the services of his TSMC to create the next-generation fully self-driving hardware 4 SoC.
At this point, we don’t know what to expect from Tesla’s 4th generation FSD processors, but given that they use one of the most advanced process technologies that will exist in 2024, the transistors, compute performance, and features is expected to be full. On the other hand, if the DigiTimes report is correct and Tesla becomes one of his top 3 customers at TSMC’s Fab 21, the automaker will probably produce quite a few chips there, not just his FSD SoC. It means that you are planning to
Neither Tesla nor TSMC have commented on this report.
Perhaps the most surprising thing about this report is that Tesla has decided to use one of TSMC’s N4 (4nm class) manufacturing technologies instead. N5A (5nm class) Manufacturing process developed specifically with automotive in mind.
TSMC’s N5A has been qualified for SoCs that need to meet the requirements. AEC-Q100 Grade 1 This is one of the strictest standards for chip quality and reliability. SoCs that meet the AEC-Q100 Grade 1 standard are mandated to operate in a temperature range of -40 to +150 degrees Celsius and pass numerous reliability and wear tests to ensure the chip remains viable in harsh environments. Guaranteed to work for a long time. conditions. In addition, N5A is ISO26262 (functional safety) and IATF16949 (quality control, defect prevention, variation reduction) standards.
To meet the requirements of all these standards, TSMC had to change some of the N5’s characteristics and design rules. TSMC’s N4 technology belongs to the company’s N5 family (although some N4 variants aren’t IP compatible with his N5), but these production nodes have never been qualified for automotive-grade applications. is not. Supposedly, TSMC is readying his N4 process tech for automotive grade, but so far we haven’t heard about it.
