The 2023 International VLSI Technology Symposium will be held in Kyoto, Japan from June 11 to 16. The official has revealed in advance some of the content that will be announced at the summit.
In addition to technical demonstrations, the VLSI Symposium will include demo sessions, joint focus sessions, evening panel discussions, short courses, workshops and special forums. There will also be some cutting-edge CMOS technology-focused papers, such as “World’s first GAA 3nm process (SF3) with new MBCFET technology”.
The reason why Samsung’s 3nm technology is so hotly anticipated is that it enables the transition from FinFET to Gate-All-Around transistor architecture. It is said that SF3 has achieved a 22% frequency increase, 34% energy efficiency improvement, and 21% area reduction (PPA) compared to the 4nm FinFET platform.
Samsung SF3 technology is an upgraded version of the industry’s first mass-produced GAA process. It adopts a multi-bridge channel MBCFET (Multi-Bridge-Channel FET) design, which can provide quite good performance for various nanosheet widths. Under a fixed standard cell height Significantly improves the power consumption performance matrix at the chip level, thereby surpassing the FinFET platform.
According to Korean media, Samsung will focus on 3nm production from 2023 to 2024, namely SF3 (3GAP) and its improved version SF3P (3GAP+). The company also plans to start rolling out its 2nm class nodes in 2025-2026.
After both Samsung and TSMC have entered the era of 3nm process, the 3nm process will become the mainstream of the foundry market in the future. Therefore, it is estimated that by 2025, the output value of the 3nm process market will reach as high as 25.5 billion US dollars, surpassing the estimated 19.3 billion US dollars output value at 5nm.
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According to data from market research agency TrendForce, in the third quarter of 2022, in the global foundry market, TSMC still ranks first with a 53.4% market share, while Samsung, which ranks second, only has a 16.4% market share. Therefore, under the fierce competition in the market, the 3nm process will also become the key to the main competition between the two companies in the future.
