Foundry Technology
Samsung Electronics Co. has revealed its new 10-nanometer foundry production process.
According to industry sources on November 3, Samsung Electronics announced on the same day that it is expanding its advanced foundry process technology offerings with the fourth-generation 14-nanometer low power ultimate process (14LPU) and the third-generation 10nm process (10LPU) to foundry customers and partners at the Samsung Foundry Forum in Santa Clara, California. These have maximized high performance and low power features that are required in next-generation products in various areas, including mobile, consumer, data center and automobile.
Previously, Samsung Electronics started mass production of logic chips through 10-nm process in the middle of last month for the first time in the industry. After that, the company unveiled the third-generation 10LPU on the 3rd and presented its process expansion plans as well. The new 14LPU design offers higher performance at the same power and design rules as Samsung’s third generation process known as 14 low power compact (LPC). The new process is optimally suited for high-performance and compute-intensive applications.
The new 10nm process, 10LPU, provides area reduction, while it retains the performance of earlier-generation 10-nm low power early (LPE) and low power performance (LPP) process.
In addition, Samsung Electronics also showcased its next generation 7nm extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) wafer and current development situation of EUV process. Taiwan’s TSMC announced that it would start production through 7-nm process, but industry sources expect that Samsung Electronics will focus on the 10-nm technology for a while considering initial costs.