iPhone 18 first release! Apple A20 chip based on TSMC 2nm manufacturing

analyst Ming-Chi Kuo reiterated that the 2026 iPhone 18 series will debut the A20 processor, which will be manufactured using TSMC’s 2nm process. He said that TSMC’s 2nm trial production yield reached 60%-70% more than three months ago, and now the yield is far above 70%.

A research report previously released by Morgan Stanley pointed out that in 2025, TSMC’s 2nm monthly production capacity will increase from this year’s 10,000 wafers trial production scale to about 50,000 wafers mass production scale.

Compared with the 3nm process, the 2nm process can reduce power consumption by 24%-35% at the same voltage, and improve performance by 15% at the same power consumption. The transistor density is 1.15 times higher than the previous generation 3nm process. These improvements are mainly due to TSMC’s 2nm use of a new all-around gate (GAA) nanosheet transistor, combined with N2 NanoFlex design technology for collaborative optimization, the overall performance of 2nm is better.

It is worth noting that due to the high cost of TSMC’s 2nm process, the iPhone 17 series in the second half of this year will not be able to use the 2nm process. The A19 processor equipped in this series still uses the 3nm process and is expected to be upgraded to the latest generation of TSMC’s N3P process.