At the Open Innovation Platform Ecosystem Forum, TSMC presented a near-term roadmap that centers on how increasing Artificial Intelligence workloads are shaping node development and the tradeoffs between performance and efficiency. TSMC announced that N2 is now in volume production and expects N2P to ramp up in early 2026. The company said it aims to deliver initial A16 parts, which combine nanosheet transistors with a rear-side Super Power Rail (SPR), by the end of 2026, and described a progression from N3 to nanosheet-based N2, then to A16 with SPR, and eventually to A14.
TSMC shared comparative metrics showing a performance increase of about 1.8x when moving from N7 to A14 at constant power, alongside an overall efficiency improvement of approximately 4.2x over the same period. For A16 specifically, the company predicts clock speeds 8-10% higher than N2P at the same voltage while cutting energy consumption by 15-20% for similar throughput. These figures were presented as part of TSMC’s argument that nanosheet and SPR integration will deliver meaningful gains for designs targeting higher performance and energy efficiency.
For customers who prefer to remain on FinFET, TSMC emphasized enhanced FinFET choices such as N3C and N4C, noting that N4C is already in use by customers. The company also highlighted NanoFlex, a cell-level tuning method introduced with N2 that lets design teams balance speed and efficiency within the same node. TSMC said NanoFlex can deliver 15% frequency gains or energy reductions of up to 30% in suitable designs, positioning it as a tool to extract additional performance or power savings without changing the underlying transistor architecture.
