For Mass-production
Samsung Electronics Co. is speeding up the process of strengthening the competitiveness of its foundry business. The company is making every effort to raise its technical levels after it promoted its foundry business from a small “team” to “business division” this year.
Samsung Electronics announced on October 18 that it has completed the development of the 8-nano semiconductor foundry process and is ready to start mass production. The 8-nano semiconductor foundry process is based on the second-generation 10-nano process. It is the stage just before the 7-nano foundry process that the company seeks to apply by introducing extreme ultraviolet (EUV) exposure equipment. The completion of the 8-nano semiconductor foundry process development means that the development of the 7-nano foundry process to be mass produced in the second half of next year is going well.
The new process is 10 percent smaller in scale and yet has 10 percent higher energy efficiency. For this reason, Qualcomm’s semiconductor chips that will be produced using the 8-nano process will provide greater performance in mobile devices, networks, server equipment and cryptocurrency mining, the company said.
Samsung Electronics is planning to improve its global foundry business ranking from the current fourth with a 7.9 percent market share to second. TSMC ranks first in terms of share of the global foundry market with 50.6 percent, while Samsung Electronics is vying with Global Foundries with a 9.6 percent market share and UMC with 8.1 percent. Lee Sang-hyun, head of foundry marketing division at Samsung Electronics, said, “We will expedite expansion of our process portfolio to provide more productive and competitive processes to our clients.”