TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) is expected to begin volume production of its new cutting-edge 3nm (N3) chips in September.

According to the Commercial Times, equipment manufacturers said that judging by the trial production of TSMC’s N3 process, the 3nm chips should enter mass production sometime next month. The world’s largest contract chipmaker should be delivering its first N3 products to its clients early next year, according to Tom’s Hardware.

To make enough chips for Apple’s latest iPhones that normally launch in September, TSMC traditionally starts volume production between March and May for new nodes, per Tom’s Hardware. But development of TSMC’s 3nm chips took several months longer this time, thereby delaying the mass production timeline.

TSMC says its initial 3nm chips will offer roughly a 10% to 15% performance improvement, reduce power consumption by 25% to 30%, and increase logic density by about 1.6 times compared to its first-generation 5nm chips, Tom’s Hardware said.

While rival Samsung’s recently announced its new 3nm chips use gate-all-around (GAA) transistor architecture, TSMC is not expected to introduce GAA until its 2nm node. Instead, TSMC is using its new FinFlex architecture to allow chip developers to mix and match different types of standard cells within one block to enhance performance, power consumption, and area, according to Tom’s Hardware.