Intel and Apple will be the first chipmakers to use Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.’s (TSMC) 3-nanometer manufacturing process, Nikkei Asia reported Friday.

TSMC is the largest semiconductor manufacturer in the world and has for years led the industry in process technology.

“The development is a big boost to TSMC’s objective of maintaining and strengthening technology leadership as it continues to invest heavily in several projects,” Global Data analyst Parth Vala, said in a research note.

According to Vala, TSMC’s 3-nanometer technology is expected to provide substantially better performance while consuming less power than the foundry’s 5-nanometer process. “It offers up to 70% gain on logic density, 30% less power consumption at same speed, and 15% speed improvement at same power,” Vala added.

Apple’s use of TSMC’s 3-nanometer process isn’t all that surprising. The company has relied almost exclusively on TSMC for the last several generations of its A-series chips and more recently its desktop-class M-series processors. Both of these are built using the foundry's 5-nanometer process.

Intel’s relationship with TSMC, on the other hand, is a developing one. Intel not only designs its own chips but it also operates its own fabs, and now plans to compete directly with TSMC with the launch of Intel Foundry Services earlier this year.

Intel has contracted with TSMC in the past to produce a swath of communications, connectivity, graphics, and chipset hardware, including the company’s latest generation of dedicated GPUs.

However, in the CPU space, Intel has relied exclusively on its own fabs, which have lagged the industry in recent years. Last summer, Intel revealed its 7-nanometer manufacturing process, which will power its Granite Rapids chips, and was delayed until 2023. TSMC’s 3-nanometer process is expected to reach mass production by late 2022, according to the company’s roadmap.

It remains to be seen which Intel products will be built in TSMC foundries going forward. Newly appointed CEO Pat Gelsinger claimed in a March press conference that Intel will “continue to build the majority of our products in Intel fabs.”

But as part its Integrated Design Manufacturing 2.0 initiative, Gelsinger said Intel would also expand the use of third-party fabs like TSMC, Samsung Electronics, and Global Foundries to supplement the chipmaker’s own capacity.

“As we grow the business we expect our engagement with foundries to grow in both size and scope. This includes manufacturing a range of modular tiles on advanced process technologies, including products at the core of our compute offerings for both clients and data center segments,” Gelsinger said during the press conference.

Nikkei Asia reports Intel is working with TSMC on at least two 3-nanometer projects, which include CPUs for notebooks and data center servers.