The foundry also described enhancements to its two chip-stacking techniques, advances in RF CMOS and work in transistors and materials, paving the way to a 3nm node and beyond. In addition, it previewed design capabilities using machine learning that it will offer before the end of the year.

Among its achievements, TSMC noted 76 percent yields on the 256Mbit SRAM made in its first-generation 7nm node, which will be in volume production next year. It also reported that an ARM Cortex-A72 processor in the node exceeded 4GHz using a new design flow.

The Taiwan company, already the world's largest foundry by far, expects to ship 11 million 12-inch-equivalent wafers this year, a typical 10 percent annual increase. The biggest share—two million wafers—will use its planar 28nm processes for which it is boosting capacity 15 percent this year.