12nm coming soon, uses 50% less power, can be 15% faster

We're swimming in a world with 14nm and 16nm products on the market, with AMD's new Radeon RX 400 series built on the 14nm FinFET process while NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX 10 series and new Titan X are using the 16nm process - it's awesome. But, we're constantly looking to the future, right?

TSMC is said to be planning the production of 12nm technology, a new process technology that our friends at Fudzilla report will "enhance competition with 28nm and lower process nodes that have been adopted over the past few years". The new 12nm node will sit alongside the 16nm product portfolio, as a smaller option from TSMC that will better compete against Samsung and GlobalFoundries' offerings.

There are three different 16nm FinFET variations that TSMC makes, with high-performance options and ultra-low power uses where only 0.6v is used. 12nm should provide us with around 50% less power consumption, and 15% more power over current FinFET technologies, at least that's according to GlobalFoundries' recently-announced 12nm process utilizing Fully Depleted Silicon-On-Insulator (FD-SOI) planar technology.

Since TSMC makes 16nm chips for companies like NVIDIA, Apple, MediaTek, and more - GlobalFoundries makes the 14nm FinFET chips that AMD uses in its Polaris-based graphics cards and upcoming Zen processors.