Samsung to start mass producing 2nm silicon in 2025, first for mobile devices
(2023/06/29)
- Reference: 1688013068
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/06/29/samsung_foundry_roadmap/
- Source link:
Samsung Electronics will commence mass production of a 2-nanometer silicon manufacturing process in 2025, the chaebol announced on Wednesday at its annual Foundry Forum.
The company claimed its 2nm process – dubbed SF2 – "has shown a 12 percent increase in performance, a 25 percent increase in power efficiency and a five percent decrease in area" compared to its current 3nm process.
After first applying the 2nm process to silicon intended for mobile devices in 2025, the mega-manufacturer will turn its attention to chips for high performance computing applications in 2026 and then drive towards automotive semiconductors the following year.
[1]
The 2025 timeframe for 2nm production puts Samsung on par with TSMC, which plans to operate at the same scale in the same year. Intel stopped talking about nanometers a while back, but has a comparable process it calls [2]20A that it hopes to crank up in 2024.
[3]
[4]
It seems likely some of Samsung's 2nm output will be chiplets that can be integrated by third parties. Why else would Samsung also have announced the "MDI Alliance" – a grouping of what it described as "partner companies as well as major players in memory, substrate packaging and testing."
The alliance will form "a packaging technology ecosystem for 2.5D and 3D Heterogeneous Integration" and "provide a one-stop turnkey service to better support customers' technological innovation."
[5]
Which sounds a lot like a plan to get important players working together to make using chiplets easier.
Samsung itself stated it plans to develop custom packaging for applications including HPC and automotive.
[6]Broadcom squeezed Samsung, now South Korea's squeezing back – hard
[7]Former exec accused of trying to clone entire Samsung chip fab on Chinese soil
[8]Samsung's screens will check your blood pressure if the movie's too scary
[9]Samsung puts ChatGPT back in the box after 'code leak'
Other Samsung news from the Foundry Forum includes:
Plans to commence foundry services for 8-inch gallium nitride (GaN) power semiconductors targeting consumer, datacenter and automotive applications, in 2025;
Development has commenced for 5nm Radio Frequency (RF), with availability due in the first half of 2025. Samsung reckons its 5nm RF process "shows a 40 percent increase in power efficiency and a 50 percent decrease in area compared to the previous 14nm process" – qualities it suggests will make for stellar 6G kit;
Plans to use its 8nm and 14nm RF processes to the automotive industry;
A third production line in Pyeongtaek, Korea, will fire up in the second half of 2023;
An under-construction fab in Texas will being operations in the second half of 2024.
Once that's all sorted, Samsung has more in store: in 2027 it plans to start mass production of silicon on an even smaller scale by kicking off mass production of its SF1.4 process, which – you guessed it! – is a 1.4nm process.
All of which probably makes 2026 and 2028 prime years for Samsung's kit to take some nice steps forward – put your correspondent down for whatever the premium Galaxy devices are called by the time these processes hit high volumes. ®
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[2] https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/05/intel_powervia/
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[6] https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/14/broadcom_samsung_south_korea/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/12/samsung_china_chip_fab_clone/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/24/samsung_future_displays/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/02/samsung_generative_ai_ban/
[10] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
The company claimed its 2nm process – dubbed SF2 – "has shown a 12 percent increase in performance, a 25 percent increase in power efficiency and a five percent decrease in area" compared to its current 3nm process.
After first applying the 2nm process to silicon intended for mobile devices in 2025, the mega-manufacturer will turn its attention to chips for high performance computing applications in 2026 and then drive towards automotive semiconductors the following year.
[1]
The 2025 timeframe for 2nm production puts Samsung on par with TSMC, which plans to operate at the same scale in the same year. Intel stopped talking about nanometers a while back, but has a comparable process it calls [2]20A that it hopes to crank up in 2024.
[3]
[4]
It seems likely some of Samsung's 2nm output will be chiplets that can be integrated by third parties. Why else would Samsung also have announced the "MDI Alliance" – a grouping of what it described as "partner companies as well as major players in memory, substrate packaging and testing."
The alliance will form "a packaging technology ecosystem for 2.5D and 3D Heterogeneous Integration" and "provide a one-stop turnkey service to better support customers' technological innovation."
[5]
Which sounds a lot like a plan to get important players working together to make using chiplets easier.
Samsung itself stated it plans to develop custom packaging for applications including HPC and automotive.
[6]Broadcom squeezed Samsung, now South Korea's squeezing back – hard
[7]Former exec accused of trying to clone entire Samsung chip fab on Chinese soil
[8]Samsung's screens will check your blood pressure if the movie's too scary
[9]Samsung puts ChatGPT back in the box after 'code leak'
Other Samsung news from the Foundry Forum includes:
Plans to commence foundry services for 8-inch gallium nitride (GaN) power semiconductors targeting consumer, datacenter and automotive applications, in 2025;
Development has commenced for 5nm Radio Frequency (RF), with availability due in the first half of 2025. Samsung reckons its 5nm RF process "shows a 40 percent increase in power efficiency and a 50 percent decrease in area compared to the previous 14nm process" – qualities it suggests will make for stellar 6G kit;
Plans to use its 8nm and 14nm RF processes to the automotive industry;
A third production line in Pyeongtaek, Korea, will fire up in the second half of 2023;
An under-construction fab in Texas will being operations in the second half of 2024.
Once that's all sorted, Samsung has more in store: in 2027 it plans to start mass production of silicon on an even smaller scale by kicking off mass production of its SF1.4 process, which – you guessed it! – is a 1.4nm process.
All of which probably makes 2026 and 2028 prime years for Samsung's kit to take some nice steps forward – put your correspondent down for whatever the premium Galaxy devices are called by the time these processes hit high volumes. ®
Get our [10]Tech Resources
[1] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZJ1WRa6409qwZ1iR@LUxCgAAAYc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/05/intel_powervia/
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZJ1WRa6409qwZ1iR@LUxCgAAAYc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
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[6] https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/14/broadcom_samsung_south_korea/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/12/samsung_china_chip_fab_clone/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/24/samsung_future_displays/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/02/samsung_generative_ai_ban/
[10] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
2nm
Pascal Monett
And 1.4nm to come. Alledgedly.
How large is an atom already ? Because there will be a point where we have to stop this, right ?
To think that I started in computing with the [1]3 µm process. Nobody even thought about TDP ! Now chips are engraved a thousand times smaller, but they still consume anywhere from 50 to 200W.
It's a miracle we can cool them down enough.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_8086
Re: 2nm
Groaning Ninny
I'm guessing you're unaware the the 5/3/2nm is not directly related to any physical property, its marketing-speak to show a jump in density and power efficiency.
Re: 2nm
katrinab
A silicon atom is 0.21nm. You need more than one of them for a transistor.
More fake announcements from Samsung
They have announced 5nm and 3nm level processes in the past, and claim they are in mass production now but almost no one uses them. It is widely believed the yields are terrible and they have had no luck in making it economically viable.
Maybe they have everything figured out now with 2nm but I am wildly skeptical until I see some sort of announcement for a major contract win for high end chips for Qualcomm, NVidia, or AMD. If it continues to be used only for Samsung's SoCs (which they don't even use for most of their Galaxy line) I will mark this down as another fake announcement from Samsung.