Reportedly, Apple has already secured the smaller and more efficient 3nm chip production from TSMC for its 2022 lineup. This process would be used for the higher performant Apple M-series and the A-series
2020 | 2021 | 2022 | |
M-Series (Mac) | 5nm | 5nm/5nm+ | 5nm+/3nm |
A-series (Ipad) | 5nm | 5nm/5nm+ | 5nm+/3nm |
A-Series (Iphone) | 5nm | 5nm/5nm+ | 5nm+/3nm |
The above table would make sense since Apple likes to stay on the cutting edge of manufacturing technology as is further evident as Apple has booked 80% of TSMCs 5nm capacity for 2021. Keep in mind that we do not know if this is the 5nm or a more optimized derivative of the process.
The next generation of Apple Silicon such as the M2(or M1plus) along with the A15 could remain on the 5nm node or a more advance 5nm+ however up until Apple makes the announcement this is only a prediction.
We know that TSMC is currently the leader in process technology, but Samsung could catch up very soon as it has bagged some major clients such as Nvidia for the RTX30 series on its more matured &efficient 10nm derivative named 8nm derivative named 8nm.