According to Co-CEO Mark Liu, volume production of 20nm parts is expected in January. The first 20nm products will apparently be SoC parts for the mobile industry. At this point we are not sure who will be the first outfit to roll out a 20nm SoC. The honour could go to Qualcomm, Nvidia, or a number of other players.
TSMC’s 28nm node remains the dominant process this year and it will generate about 23 percent of wafer sales in 2013.
Liu also noted that the foundry is trying to ramp up 16nm FinFET production ahead of schedule, but for the time being it is probably best to focus on upcoming 20nm products, namely GPUs and SoCs.
