Samsung’s semi-conductor and foundry business is one of its most profitable ventures. However, it didn’t get into the 7nm race early, leading to Taiwan’s TSMC getting the upper hand.
Samsung wants to play catch up and has announced the building of a new foundry which will use Extreme Ultra Violet (EUV) process for production of 7nm chips.
The new foundry will be located in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea, and will begin mass production next year.
In a related news, Samsung today announced that its partnership with Qualcomm will be expanded thanks to the new EUV process technology which will be used to manufacture Qualcomm’s 5G mobile chipsets next year.
The EUV process brings a number of advantages for chip production and performance. First, the chip is smaller than previous generation ones which means device manufacturers will be able to design much slimmer devices or increase battery capacities due to the additional space.
Samsung says the process technology also reduces the complexity associated with production and has a greater yield than 10nm FinFET process. Chips produced using the process will also have a 10% increase in performance and a 35% reduction in power consumption.
TSMC on the other hand will still use FinFET for its own 7nm chips. However, its early foray into 7nm production means that it will handle production of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 855 chip.
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By the time Samsung begins its own 7nm production, it should be ready to manufacture the Snapdragon 865 or whatever Qualcomm decides to call the chipset for 2020.
