Samsung Foundry confirms changes to its roadmap and for its 3nm

Written by
Matthieu S.

| July 10, 2021 at 1:10 p.m. | 959 bims

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While Samsung was looking to rush into 3nm to the point of wanting to eclipse 4nm, a project that we could have imagined on the right track with the 3nm tape-out with GAAFET transistors, a few changes have nevertheless been made. carried out on the roadmap of its foundry division concerning the 3 nm and its famous transistors gate-all-around (GAA) – which Samsung also calls MBCFET, for multi-bridge channel fild-effect transistors.

Thanks to a presentation by the founder at the Foundry Forum 2021 in China, we now know that the 3GAE – 3 nm process gate-all-around early, the first version of the 3nm from Samsung – will arrive well behind schedule, with volume production planned for 2022 instead of 2021 as was announced in 2019 when it was introduced. The reason for this change is obviously not known, but one can obviously speculate that the design of the new types of transistors may have been more difficult than anticipated, or that the initial roadmap was simply too ambitious and not very realistic. Note that this version has disappeared from the founder’s public roadmap, which would imply that the process will not be available to everyone and could only be used exclusively by Samsung System LSI (Large Scale Integration) and a handful of Preferred Customers. It would not be the first time and the first node of a generation at Samsung has rarely been massively adopted by its customers anyway.

On the other hand, the 3GAP – 3 nm process gate-all-around plus – still appears on the roadmap, so it will undoubtedly be the truly commercial version open to all of Samsung’s 3 nm. The volume production of it is planned for 2023, which means that the democratization of MBCFET transistors will wait a little longer.

In return, the 5LPP and 4LPP nodes have been added to the roadmap of the Korean founder, they will always be FinFET processes and which will therefore reproduce the intermediate stages – easier to use by customers with their existing IPs, because always the same type of transistors – which competitor TSMC also has on its roadmap. Volume production of 5LPP is still planned for this year and that of 4LPP for 2022, but the increase in their production will start almost simultaneously in 2021. Initially, Samsung showing 4LPE as an improvement of 7LPP, but 5nm and 4 nm are now displayed as separate classes, suggesting that the improvements in performance and consumption will be notable, or that the processes have at least undergone significant internal evolutions compared to the 7 nm. Enough to excuse the 3nm delay?

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