The world’s largest chipmaker Samsung Electronics Co. announced that it was mass-producing microprocessors through 10-nanometer process for the first time in the industry.
The South Korean tech giant said on Monday it would become the first to fully employ fabrication in 10nm node technology after having been first to apply the earlier-generation 14nm on application processor chips in January.
The company said that compared to the 14-nm process, the 10-nm technology increases chip performance by 27 percent and reduces energy consumption by 40 percent. The next-generation process will also allow 30 percent more yield per silicon wafer. In technology node, the smaller the number, the more transistors can fit on the die, making a chip more powerful.
Samsung said it applied what it called triple patterning, where patterns of the circuit are drawn on the wafer before cutting, and this is done three times for precision on existing equipment, which is crucial for designing chips to be smaller.
After the beginning of commercial production of the 1st generation 10-nm process, Samsung is developing the 2nd generation (10LPP) process with a goal of mass production in 2017 and it plans to leverage the 10-nm process for a long time through performance improvement and expansion of derivative processes.
Samsung’s 10-nm process chips will power new IT products to be launched early next year, and be applied to other products and foundry customers.
By Lee seung-hoon
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