Bitmain's 5nm chip is close to successful mass production after the first quarter of next year

An old news came out today that TSMC's 5nm process has won five major customers, including Apple, HiSilicon, AMD, Bitmain and Xilinx. The article said that there were also so-called industry insiders who refuted it, saying that only Apple and HiSilicon have been finalized so far.

Wu said blockchain has learned exclusively from a Taiwanese supply chain source that Bitmain is not only a customer of TSMC's 5nm chips, but also that the 5nm mining machine chips are already in the process of being taped out, and everything is going well. Similar to the first generation of 7nm chips, the first generation of 5nm testing means more, and the mining machine equipped with mature 5nm chips may be released after the first quarter of next year or in the second quarter.

Regarding the progress of 5nm chips, Wu Jihan once revealed at the Frankfurt Mining Conference hosted by Bitmain that 5nm will start mass production in the first quarter of 2020, and the research and development of 3nm chips is also on the way, and even 2nm and 1nm chips are already on the agenda.

Earlier, TSMC President Wei Zhejia mentioned in a corporate briefing that TSMC's 5nm process has entered the risk trial production stage and has a good yield performance. It will enter mass production in the first half of next year as originally planned. Compared with the 7nm process currently in mass production, the 5nm chip density can be greatly increased by 80%, and the computing speed can also be increased by 20%.

At the Chengdu Customer Appreciation Meeting held the day before yesterday, Bitmain's main sales models were still the S17 and T17 series. It did not disclose the next-generation 7nm mining machine S19 that had been successfully taped out and had an energy efficiency ratio of up to 30 watts per T.

In the second half of 2019, Bitmain placed an order with TSMC for about 50,000 chips, including 16nm and 7nm chips, which can produce about 600,000 mining machines. However, TSMC's production capacity for both 7nm and 5nm chips is in short supply, and they are being competed for by major mobile phone customers. Although the Samsung 8nm chips used by Shenma and Canaan have poor performance, they win in production capacity and price. The support of TSMC and Samsung will determine the outcome of the battle between Bitmain and Shenma.