Samsung will mass-produce 3nm process next week

by ·

Samsung’s foundry business has been at the center of a storm over the past few months. At the beginning of this year, it was first reported that the management of Samsung Electronics decided to investigate the related issues of the semiconductor process. Then there was an employee leak incident, and then the yield and performance problems of the advanced process led Qualcomm and Nvidia to shift new orders to TSMC. Recent statistics show that due to the loss of orders, Samsung has become the only negative growth company among the top ten generation factories.

Recently, Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong went to Europe. One of the schedules was to go to ASML in the Netherlands to discuss future cooperation between the two parties to obtain more extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines. According to Yonhap News Agency, Samsung is expected to announce the mass production of the 3nm process next week, ahead of TSMC in the production time of the new generation process technology.

Samsung will introduce a new GAAFET full-surround gate transistor process at the 3nm process node, which can achieve a 30% performance improvement, 50% reduction in power consumption, and 45% reduction in an area compared to existing FinFETs. In contrast, TSMC’s N3 process node will still use FinFET but will introduce FINFLEX technology. The mass production time will be in the second half of this year, and there are rumors that it will be August.

“First is technology, second is technology and third is also technology,” Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong said upon his return from a business trip to Europe earlier this month.

Although Samsung has made up its mind to invest more money in the research and development of advanced semiconductor technology, in order to catch up with TSMC in the next few years, the road ahead is still difficult. Multiple news channels indicate that even if Samsung preemptively mass-produces the 3nm process, it faces the dilemma of a lack of customer orders. According to Business Korea, Samsung will mass-produce the 2nm process in 2025, keeping pace with TSMC in the next-generation semiconductor process.

Tags: