Samsung Electronics, the leading South Korean semiconductor manufacturer, has reportedly started the shipment of chips made using the world's most advanced 3-nanometer manufacturing technology, which has substantially cut down power consumption and improved the overall performance.
About 100 corporate and government representatives attended an event which the tech giant conducted on Monday to mark the release of the first shipment of 3nm chips from its chip-making facility in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province.
Samsung's secret weapon for outperforming its rival TSMC is the 3nm technology. Currently, TSMC holds over 50% of the global market, leaving Samsung in a distant second place despite its expertise in memory chips, with less than 20% of the market share.
Samsung's 3nm technology offers a better transistor density as compared to the existing 5nm technology, resulting in advanced chips for big data, autonomous vehicles, and artificial intelligence running faster and using less power.
Samsung is also the first company to use a more advanced transistor architecture called GAAFET or gate-all-around field-effect transistor technology, which boosted the optimum efficiency of the existing fin field-effect transistor technology (FinFET).
Samsung has trademarked its GAAFET technology as ‘MBCFET (Multi-Bridge-Channel FET)’.
The next-gen foundry microfabrication, which is relatively small than 3nm, is believed to be crucial for GAAFET, but chipmakers are trying to improve the low yield rate during the initial stages of production.
Samsung claims that its engineers began researching the GAAFET technology back in the early 2000s, implementing it 17 years later in 2017 for the then-imminent 3nm production process. The firm officially began mass producing 3nm chips last month, becoming the first chip manufacturer to do so.
According to Samsung, the overall technological improvements of its first-generation 3nm process have led to a decline in power consumption of almost 45% as well as an increase in performance of 23%, as compared to the existing FinFET-based 5nm technology.
Power usage is anticipated to be reduced by half for the 2nd gen, with performance increasing by 30%.
Samsung is implementing cutting-edge technology in its chips to prioritize high-performance computing first, with ambitions to diversify applications in partnership with its clients.
Samsung claimed that it is planning to increase the production to make chips at its second chip-making facility in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province.
Source credits: https://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20220725000623