Number of GAA-related Patents Increasing Fast
The Korean Intellectual Property Office announced on July 18 that the number of patents related to the gate-all-around (GAA) technology is increasing fast these days.
In the semiconductor industry, GAA is regarded as an improvement on FinFET. The difference between the two is that the latter has current passages in three surfaces and the former has current passages in four.
“The number of FinFET-related patents reached a peak of 1,936 in 2017 and fell to 1,508 last year,” the office explained, adding, “That of GAA-related patents increased from 173 to 381 in that period.”
At present, TSMC accounts for 31.4 percent of GAA-related patent applications, followed by Samsung Electronics (20.6 percent), IBM (10.2 percent) and GlobalFoundries (5.5 percent).
The competition between TSMC and Samsung Electronics is likely to keep heating up. Samsung Electronics is planning to apply GAA to its 3-nm process starting from next year. TSMC recently announced that it would apply the same technology to its 2-nm process starting from 2023.