TECH TALK
The Race to 5nm
MOORE’S LAW MIGHT BE DEAD, or at least seriously slowing down, but progress hasn’t stopped. 2019 saw AMD launch Ryzen 3000 CPUs and Radeon RX 5000 GPUs on TSMC’s then cutting-edge N7 process, and 2020 brought us the Ryzen 5000 and Radeon RX 6000 chips on the same node. Nvidia opted for Samsung 8N for its RTX 30-series GPUs (and N7 for the datacenter GA100), while Intel still tries to get a handle on 10nm. The question now: Which company will be the first to release 5nm hardware?
Jarred Walton
If you want to count Apple, it already launched the first consumer 5nm chips built on TSMC’s EUVenhanced N5 node in October 2020. OK, maybe the A14 silicon doesn’t count since it’s not going into anything remotely PC. If that’s your mindset, certainly the A14-derived M1 processor at the heart of the new MacBook line qualifies. Still, we want AMD and Nvidia—and maybe even Intel, if it outsources to TSMC—hardware manufactured on a 5nm node.