Tech giants hold annual Samsung Foundry Forum
South Korea’s Samsung Electronics disclosed a technology roadmap on June 28 with the target of starting 2-nanometer mobile chips in 2025 to catch up with business bellwether TSMC of Taiwan.
In its annual Samsung Foundry Forum 2023 in Silicon Valley, the tech giant also vowed to come up with 2-nanometer chips for high-performance computing in 2026 and automobiles in 2027.
The Seoul-based corporations also expected that mass production based on the 1.4-nanometer process would start in 2027.
A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter. The width of human hair is typically between 80,000 and 100,000 nanometers.
Chipmakers have put forth efforts to reduce the nano-scale to gaurantee better performance and power efficiency.
For example, Samsung noted that its 2-nanometer process had shown a 12 percent increase in performance, a 25% improvement in power efficiency, and a 5 percent decrease in area, compared to its 3-nanometer technology.
“Samsung Foundry is helping simplify designs that are becoming even more complex amid the application of the most advanced processes and new technologies such as heterogeneous integration,” Samsung Executive Vice President Kye Jong-wook said.
“We will continue to strive for consistent growth in the Samsung Foundry ecosystem in terms of both scale and quality,” he said.
Experts point out that Samsung is required to secure 2-nanometer technology by mid-decade to remain competitive in the foundry market of manufacturing chips for other firms.
“TSMC, a dominant leader in the foundry market, also plans to adopt the 2-nanometer process in 2025. To compete with TSMC, Samsung also has to complete the development of the 2-nanometer technology by then,” Professor Han Tae-hui at Sungkyunkwan University in Korea said.
According to consultancy TrendForce, TSMC accounted for 60.1 percent of the foundry market during the first quarter of this year, followed by Samsung Electronics with 12.4 percent and GolbalFoundries with 6.6 percent.
