The company's 16nm FinFETs pass critical QC tests.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) recently announced that it has entered risk production for its 16-nanometer FinFET Plus (16FF+) process.

It is yet another sign that the world's largest chip foundry is ahead of schedule with its first 3D chips that will be at the core of a new generation of smaller, more powerful mobile devices, according to analysts who cover the company.

"They only took about three-and-a-half quarters to migrate to this new geometry from 20 nanometers in the first quarter of 2014," said Carlos Peng, an analyst with Fubon Securities. "That's a little bit faster than the industry average."

TSMC is conducting small-volume shipments of 16FF+ this quarter, according to Peng. The company's announcement of the "milestone" included endorsements of the process technology by customers such as Avago Technologies, Freescale, LG Electronics, MediaTek, Nvidia, Renesas and Xilinx.

"Those customers have only placed orders with TSMC, which shows a lot of confidence that TSMC is well ahead of Samsung" with FinFET, Peng said.

TSMC President Mark Liu said in a press release:

Our successful ramp-up in 20SoC has blazed a trail for 16FF and 16FF+, allowing us to rapidly offer a highly competitive technology to achieve maximum value for customers' products. We believe this new process can provide our customers the right balance between performance and cost so they can best meet their design requirements and time-to-market goals.