It is noticed that the 4nm process used by Samsung Semiconductor has been criticized a lot because it is far less efficient than TSMC used to manufacture Apple A16, Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, MediaTek Dimensity 9000 and Nvidia RTX 4000 4nm process for its GPU series, which Samsung Semiconductor uses to manufacture the Exynos 2200 and Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipsets.

Samsung Semiconductor’s SF3 chip manufacturing process will use 3nm GAP technology, an improved version of the SF3E process, which is used to manufacture chips in the second half of 2022. The new process relies on Samsung’s improved GAA (gate all around) transistors, which the company calls MBCFETs (multi-bridge channel field-effect transistors). This node promises further optimizations compared to SF4 (second-generation 4nm), but the company did not make direct comparisons to its first-generation 3nm process. SF3 is said to be 22% faster at the same power consumption, or 34% lower power consumption at the same clock speed and transistor count, and also enables a 21% smaller logic area.

Typically, Samsung’s first-generation chip manufacturing process is not widely used, while subsequent generations are used by various chip companies. Based on Samsung Semiconductor’s track record, its second-generation 3nm chip manufacturing technology is likely to be used by at least one major chip customer. There are rumors that the Exynos 2500 and Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 may use the SF3 process.

The company’s fourth-generation 4nm process, aimed at high-performance computing applications such as server CPUs and GPUs, offers a 10% performance boost and 23% lower power consumption compared to SF4 (second-generation 4nm) reduce. The new process will compete with TSMC’s N4P (second-generation 4nm) and N4X (third-generation 4nm) nodes, which are due in 2024 and 2025, respectively. According to AnandTech, Samsung Semiconductor’s SF4X is the company’s first node targeting high-performance computing in recent years.

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According to media reports on South Korea’s Naver, Samsung has reassigned some of its fab employees from legacy processes to 3nm processes (or lower). The company does not appear to have enough talent to support all nodes, so industry watchers say Samsung has reallocated manpower from the 130nm and 65nm foundry processes.

However, this reorganization has not come without a price. Recent reports suggest that Samsung is no longer accepting orders for chips based on 130nm and 65nm nodes from small and medium-sized fabless, which specialize in semiconductor design.

In terms of competition in the semiconductor space, the good news for Samsung is that it’s not the only chipmaker facing these issues. Semiconductor companies in the U.S., Taiwan and China are also struggling to hire more employees.

TSMC recently delayed the production of its 3nm chips, probably for the same reason. Samsung did ship its first 3nm chips last year, but the first batch was very small.

The new Samsung Galaxy S23 series phones use 4nm-based chips, namely Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, and these chips are made from TSMC.

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NVIDIA, Qualcomm, IBM and Baidu will use the South Korean company’s latest manufacturing process to bring their future products to market, while Samsung hopes to gain an edge against TSMC in the chip foundry race.

Samsung will use the recently announced 3-nanometer node to supply chips in large quantities to fabless companies starting as early as 2024. NVIDIA will use the 3-nanometer node to make its next-generation GPUs, IBM will make its own CPUs, Qualcomm needs Arm chips for smartphones, and Baidu will use 3-nanometer technology for its cloud data centers.

Samsung began mass manufacturing 3nm chips back in June. The company says its latest manufacturing technology delivers substantial improvements in power efficiency (45%) and chip performance (23%) compared to the previous generation’s 5nm node.

A second-generation 3nm process is already in development, as Samsung says there is still plenty of room to further improve efficiency and performance.

While the company has made progress in the 3nm race, Samsung is the second largest chip foundry, well behind TSMC, which has about three times the market share of Samsung. TSMC is working to expand its manufacturing outside of Taiwan, starting with a new plant in the United States. Meanwhile, Samsung already has an international approach to its business, as they have manufacturing plants in Korea (Gilheung, Hwaseong, Pyeongtaek), the US (Austin, Tyler) and China (Xi’an).

Samsung is known for ruling the memory particle business, but the current situation could help them overtake TSMC as a rival manufacturing superpower, with many “big tech” companies also looking for new partners.

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According to the report, Samsung Electronics advanced process yields are very low, since the 5nm process has yield problems, and the situation becomes worse in the 4nm and 3nm process. Samsung’s 3nm solution process is rumored to have a yield of no more than 20% since mass production, and the mass production progress is bottlenecked.

Samsung is currently experiencing yield-related issues at the 4nm and 5nm process nodes, and the company does not want this issue to arise again for the 3nm process. So it hopes to help Samsung fabs with front-end processes and chip performance improvements by working with Silicon Frontline Technology.

The U.S. company provides chip qualification assessment and ESD (electrostatic discharge) prevention technology. ESD is one of the main causes of semiconductor chip defects, caused by friction between equipment and metal during the manufacturing process. Samsung has reportedly been working with Silicon Frontline for a long time during the chip design and production process, with satisfactory results. The company will now use the company’s technology in the chip verification process.

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However, TSMC has grabbed the main customers does not mean that there is no hidden worry, originally Intel is also one of the two major customers of TSMC 3nm debut, but not long ago there was news that Intel canceled the order, 14 generations of Core on the GPU module using the 5nm process, did not use TSMC 3nm process.

However, the fact that TSMC has grabbed major customers does not mean that there are no worries. Originally, Intel was also one of the two major customers of TSMC’s 3nm launch. However, it was reported not long ago that Intel canceled the order, and the GPU module on the 14th generation Core uses a 5nm process. , did not use TSMC’s 3nm process.

Now, Apple, the only customer of TSMC’s 3nm process, has also been shaken. A source from the industry chain @Mobile Chip Daren broke the news that TSMC’s N3 process has been abandoned internally, because customers don’t need it, and Apple has also given up.

But N3 process was abandoned, which does not mean that TSMC’s 3nm process is finished, in fact, N3 is only the first generation of the 3nm process, compared to the N5 process power consumption can be reduced by about 25-30%, performance can be improved by 10-15%, transistor density increased by about 70%.

However, the N3 process has a narrow range of applications and is only suitable for manufacturing specific products for early customers with superb investment capabilities and the pursuit of new processes.

In short, the initial generation of N3 process performance and density is very good, but too expensive, only suitable for the dirt-cheap customers willing to burn money, such as Apple, Intel, the results of these two have not been used.

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The second generation of the 3nm GAP process can reduce power consumption by 50% and improve performance by 30%, while the area is reduced by 35% for better results, but it will not be ready for production until 2024, with 2 years to go.

However, although Samsung grabbed the first 3nm title, but the industry has been questioning Samsung’s 3nm level, especially customer orders, after all, TSMC’s 3nm orders have been contested by Apple, Intel, Qualcomm and other companies, their orders are not running.

In contrast, Samsung 3nm who have used is the key, the current 3nm GAE process debuted to a Chinese mining chip maker, and the second generation of 3nm process is still relatively distant, the good news is that some analysts say that Samsung’s 3nm GAP process has been negotiated by a number of customers, the more likely to be cell phone chip makers.

Which specific manufacturer is interested? This is no news, there is a greater possibility will be Qualcomm, Qualcomm even if a large number of orders to TSMC production again, but also made it clear that the future will not give up cooperation with Samsung, as long as Samsung’s 3nm process no longer have yield problems, Qualcomm will obviously still consider using it to produce Snapdragon chips.

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The South Korean media, citing an expert, reported that the main task of Samsung Electronics is still to improve the yield rate when adopting the 3nm process foundry.

The expert also said that Samsung Electronics’ 3nm process to reach a profitable level, yield rate to improve to 80%-90%, Samsung Electronics seems to take a long time to reach this level.

Although Samsung Electronics is the world’s second-largest foundry, but their share of the global foundry market, for many years, far below TSMC, they also have high hopes for the 3nm process, but if the yield rate is not optimistic, it may affect their market prospects for this process, whether this can be used to narrow the gap with TSMC there are variables. Foreign media also mentioned in the report, some media believe that Samsung Electronics will not bring a threat to TSMC.

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(From: Samsung Newsroom)

The official press release reads: “On July 25, Samsung Electronics held a shipment ceremony for its chip foundry products based on next-generation 3nm ring gate transistor (GAA) technology at Line V1 (EVU extreme ultraviolet lithography only) in Hwaseong Park, Gyeonggi Province.

Kyeong-Hyeon Kye (from left), President of Samsung Electronics DS Division, Changyang Lee, Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy of Korea, and Si-young Choi, CEO of Samsung Electronics Foundry Division at shopping mode, encourage the approximately 100 executives and employees involved in the development and mass production of 3nm GAA who participated in this event.

There are also chief executive officers (CEOs) of Daeduk Electronics (Kim Young-Jae), Dongjin Semichem (Lee Jun-Hyeok), Soulbrain (Jung Hyun-Seok), Won Semicon (Kim Chang-Hyun), Wonik IPS (Lee Hyun-Duk), PSK (Lee Kyung-il), Telechips CEO (Jang-Gyu Lee), and other chief executive officers (CEOs) of companies, as well as the presence of KC Tech Vice President (Ko Sang-Geol).

While Samsung is also committed to mass-producing 3nm GAA chips for smartphone manufacturers, industry giants such as Qualcomm are not among its first customers. Instead, the initial supply will go to the cryptocurrency mining industry, mainly because the new process offers significant energy efficiency improvements.

WCCFTech expects that Samsung is still on track to launch a production Exynos 2300 chip based on the 3nm GAA process, but the upcoming Galaxy S23 may still be a “two-step” process.

In other words, Samsung may be considering offering a derivative version based on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC at the same time — but only if rival TSMC falls short in 3nm volume production.

Samsung is said to have prepared prototypes for the San Diego-based chipset maker to entice Qualcomm to choose its own foundry for its next-generation flagship SoCs.

Meanwhile, its biggest rival TSMC will also be mass-producing 3nm chips later in 2022 — with the first M2 Pro / M2 Max custom chipsets expected to be used in Apple’s new MacBook Pro and other hardware lines.

Finally, a review of the advantages of Samsung’s 3nm GAA process — officially claiming 45% lower power consumption, 23% higher performance, and 16% smaller chip area compared to the 5nm solution.

If all goes well, the second-generation process could also reduce power consumption by up to 50 percent, boost performance by 30 percent, and reduce chip area by 35 percent.

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It is not clear how many customers Samsung’s 3nm GAA will poach from TSMC’s side, but from the paper parameters, its upgrade iteration over the 5nm process is still quite bright.

"For mobile devices, ring-gate transistors will bring significant energy efficiency gains and size scaling, resulting in longer battery life.

In addition, the design flexibility of GAA means it is highly conducive to design technology co-optimization (DTCO) and improved power, performance and area (PPA) benefits."

Specifically, the initial 3nm process is up to 45% more energy efficient than 5nm, improving performance by 23% and reducing chip area by 16%.

The second-generation 3nm process is expected to reduce power consumption by 50%, improve performance by 30%, and reduce chip area by 35%.

Samsung is still struggling to boost its 3nm chip capacity to achieve profitability

Even so, Samsung is still facing a direct challenge from TSMC. All the A / M series chips currently used in Apple’s iPhone, iPad and Mac devices are given to TSMC for OEM.

What’s even more embarrassing is that even the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 upgrade (Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1), which is supported by many Android flagship smartphones in the second half of 2022, has been switched from Samsung to TSMC.

"It is reported that Samsung originally planned to use its own flagship chip on the Galaxy S22, but unfortunately encountered the problem of overheating and eventually had to throttle back to moderate the performance experience.

As to whether there is a new plan based on 3nm GAA ring gate transistor technology in the future, it is not known."

Finally, a report from South Korea says that Samsung has scheduled a launch event for its first 3nm chip on July 25.

The first buyer, however, is a cryptocurrency mining company, the type of customer that apparently won’t help Samsung grab more business from TSMC.

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On the last day of June, Samsung announced the official mass production of the 3nm process, this time Samsung was finally ahead of TSMC to take the lead in mass production of a new generation of process and is bending the curve, the latter’s 3nm will only be mass-produced in the second half of this year.

According to Samsung’s official introduction, on the 3nm chip, it abandoned the previous FinFET architecture and adopted the new GAA transistor architecture, which significantly improved the chip’s power performance.

Compared to 5nm, the newly developed 3nm GAE process is able to reduce power consumption by 45%, reduce area by 16%, and improve performance by 23% at the same time.

The second-generation 3nm GAP process can reduce power consumption by 50%, improve performance by 30%, and reduce area by 35% at the same time for better results.

What about further down the line? Samsung also has a plan, after the 3nm GAP process will usher in the 2nm GAP process, also based on nanosheet technology GAA transistors, but the structure is further optimized, from 3 nanosheets to 4, which can improve the drive current, while also optimizing the stacking structure to improve performance and reduce power consumption.

2nm GAP process mass production time is also set, is expected to mass production in 2025, the timing and TSMC power production 2nm process is about the same, and is likely to be technically ahead of the latter, because TSMC’s 2nm process in the transistor density squeeze toothpaste, improve only 10%.

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