Samsung’s foundry business chief Choi Si-young delivers a keynote speech at Samsung Foundry Forum in San Jose on Oct. 3. Photo courtesy of Samsung Electronics

Korean tech giant vies to start mass production with 1.4nm techs in 2027

South Korea’s Samsung Electronics announced on Oct. 4 that it would start mass production of semiconductors with 1.4-nonometer technology by 2027.

Toward that end, the Seoul-based company told its annual Samsung Foundry Forum in San Jose that it would master and apply the 2nm technology for mass production by 2025.

A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter. The width of human hair is typically between 80,000 and 100,000 nanometers.

Global powerhouses, including IBM, Samsung, Intel, and TSMC, have competed to reduce nanometers in chips to put more transistors on a silicon chip for better computing power.

Last year, IBM disclosed the world’s first 2nm semiconductor chip design. But in terms of mass production, Samsung is the most advanced with 3nm technology.

“The technology development goal down to 1.4nm and foundry platforms specialized for each application, together with stable supply through consistent investment, are all part of Samsung’s strategies to secure customers’ trust and support their success,” Samsung’s foundry business chief Choi Si-young said.

Samsung plans to take advantage of gate-all-around (GAA) based technology to come up with the 2nm and 1.4nm processes.

The GAA architecture is regarded as the desired solution to deal with bottlenecks, which take place in moving currents via the small wires of semiconductors.

Global chip leaders have chased the technology, which is expected to further increase the performance of semiconductors and cut down on their power usage, according to experts.

“Top-tier firms in the semiconductor industry compete to take the lead in the GAA architecture, which would be the mainstream solution in the nanometer rivalry for the time being,” Prof. Han Tae-hee from Sungkyunkwan University said.

“For now, Samsung appears to be ahead of the pack. But the gap with TSMC and Intel is not that big. It remains to be seen who will eventually win out in the fierce competition.”
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