Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is the most important technology company for Taiwan. The company is responsible for manufacturing a large number of processing chips for important companies such as Apple, AMD, Intel, NVIDIA, Qualcomm and others.
Starting this year, TSMC will begin manufacturing a number of these processing chips outside the country, especially the United States. The initial condition imposed was that these factories outside Taiwan were only allowed to manufacture processing chips that use technology built two generations back or older.
J.W. Kuo, Taiwan's Minister of Economy, recently announced that the government had withdrawn this directive, because now, there is no need for Taiwan to "keep" the advantages of this technology. He said that as a private company, they should be allowed to make their own decisions if they want to increase the production capacity of the latest processing chips.
With this, technically TSMC's factory in Arizona, USA is now allowed to manufacture processing chips using their latest 2nm process technology. However, the reality is that the factory will only be able to produce chips using the process by the end of this decade, around 2030.
This is nothing new. Currently, TSMC's plan for the Arizona factory is to produce chips using the 4nm process (phase one) starting this year, and to produce chips using the 3nm process (phase two) in 2028. TSMC is expected to have the factory equipped with the ability to manufacture chips using the 3nm process by 2030.
It is currently unknown if TSMC will make any changes to this timeline.