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Samsung Foundry Forum announcements

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Re: Samsung Foundry Forum announcements

#41

Post by MangoCoffee »

> process technology migration to 3- and 2-nanometer (nm) based on the company’s Gate-All-Around (GAA) transistor structure

I believe GAA is the next gen tech for the node process. Samsung is the first foundry to do GAA w/3nm while TSMC is sticking w/FinFET for their 3nm. It'll be interesting to see how 3nm FinFET compare to 3nm GAA.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/16041/where-are-my-gaafets-ts...

edit:

>After that, transistor structures begin to change. Samsung and TSMC are manufacturing chips at 7nm and 5nm based on today’s finFETs. Samsung will move to nanosheet FETs at 3nm. Intel is also developing GAA technology. TSMC plans to extend finFETs to 3nm, and then will migrate to nanosheet FETs at 2nm around 2024.

https://semiengineering.com/the-increasingly-uneven-race-to-...

Re: Samsung Foundry Forum announcements

#42

Post by rrss »

marcodiego wrote: post #30
1-6 wrote: post #20

Samsung has a dishonorable marketing department. 3nm is not actually 3nm. I'm fed up... OLED is superior so they had to take the path of calling theirs QLED which is actually just an LCD screen with phosphors on top of a blue backlight (and it's nothing new).

What is the best metric nowadays? Dhrystones/MIPS/FLOPS per MHz/Watt per square inch? As a complete outsider, millions of transistors per square inch sounds like a very intuitive metric of how small things are.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/a-better-way-to-measure-progress-i...

Re: Samsung Foundry Forum announcements

#44

Post by p1necone »

1-6 wrote: post #20

Samsung has a dishonorable marketing department. 3nm is not actually 3nm. I'm fed up... OLED is superior so they had to take the path of calling theirs QLED which is actually just an LCD screen with phosphors on top of a blue backlight (and it's nothing new).

I agree calling their display tech QLED is pretty shady, and clearly just intended to confuse people. But I'm glad their high end display tech is not OLED yet, because nobody seems to have solved burn in satisfactorily yet (if you play a lot of games or use them with a PC).

Re: Samsung Foundry Forum announcements

#45

Post by mhh__ »

hokumguru wrote: post #5

At what point do we have to stop because we’ve hit physical limits? At 3nm we are talking transistors only a few dozen atoms wide, what’s the smallest theoretical transistor we can build?

The actual feature sizes are still (remember these shapes are 3D) quite a few scalings away from being even close to atoms.

Re: Samsung Foundry Forum announcements

#46

Post by lend000 »

1-6 wrote: post #20

Samsung has a dishonorable marketing department. 3nm is not actually 3nm. I'm fed up... OLED is superior so they had to take the path of calling theirs QLED which is actually just an LCD screen with phosphors on top of a blue backlight (and it's nothing new).

I thought the Q stood for quantum dot, which they actually use? (Not that that makes them unique nowadays).

Re: Samsung Foundry Forum announcements

#47

Post by p1necone »

marcodiego wrote: post #30
1-6 wrote: post #20

Samsung has a dishonorable marketing department. 3nm is not actually 3nm. I'm fed up... OLED is superior so they had to take the path of calling theirs QLED which is actually just an LCD screen with phosphors on top of a blue backlight (and it's nothing new).

What is the best metric nowadays? Dhrystones/MIPS/FLOPS per MHz/Watt per square inch? As a complete outsider, millions of transistors per square inch sounds like a very intuitive metric of how small things are.

Performance per watt is a pretty decent measure (and I would argue really the only measure that matters - assuming it's possible to get it "fast enough", and with the exception of IoT type stuff where you probably only care about getting power consumption as low as possible because pretty much any amount of processing power is enough).

You still need to somewhat segment into low/medium/high power chips when comparing them though as it's generally not possible to just take a very high perf/watt low power part and scale up the same design with the same level of efficiency.

Re: Samsung Foundry Forum announcements

#48

Post by bazooka_penguin »

nabaraz wrote: post #6

I can never remember what xnm means as it varies between companies. In this case, Samsung's 3nm = Intel's 7nm I am still waiting for a standard based on transistor density numbers!

It should be ahead of Intel 4 ("4nm"). Samsung 5nm density is approximately 127M gates/mmsq on paper. Samsung 4nm will scale to around 0.75x area according to their China conference earlier this year, to a transistor density of around 168M gates/mmsq. They had another conference the other day detailing 3nm, which will scale down another 25%, to around 224M gates/mmsq.

Intel 4 was estimated to be up to 200M gates/mmsq. I don't think we have exact numbers since Intel only released numbers for their previous 10nm plan, which were heavily revised for Tigerlake iirc. I think Intel 3 is a variant of Intel 4 so 3GAA will presumably be similar to Intel 3.

edit: slides of the 3nm conference yesterday https://twitter.com/stshank/status/1445924295121592321/photo...

Re: Samsung Foundry Forum announcements

#49

Post by baybal2 »

MangoCoffee wrote: post #41

> process technology migration to 3- and 2-nanometer (nm) based on the company’s Gate-All-Around (GAA) transistor structure I believe GAA is the next gen tech for the node process. Samsung is the first foundry to do GAA w/3nm while TSMC is sticking w/FinFET for their 3nm. It'll be interesting to see how 3nm FinFET compare to 3nm GAA. https://www.anandtech.com/show/16041/where-are-my-gaafets-ts... edit: >After that, t…

> I believe GAA is the next gen tech for the node process. Samsung is the first foundry to do GAA w/3nm while TSMC is sticking w/FinFET for their 3nm. It'll be interesting to see how 3nm FinFET compare to 3nm GAA.

Comparing Apples to Oranges, and doing doing a comparison on taste vs. size.

The device may well be awesome, but first ICs using it not so.

The biggest advancements in under 14nm were in metal, not so much with the device, process, or materials.

Even if Samsung will produce a better device design, they will still have to catch up to TSMC in so many, many other areas.

Only single digit number of people on this planet will ever know the exact measurements of FinFet vs. GAAFet

But one thing for sure, Samsung saying that they pioneered a new device ahead of TSMC does indeed sound very, and impressive to a certain category big co. people regardless of actual performance.

Re: Samsung Foundry Forum announcements

#50

Post by p1necone »

lend000 wrote: post #46
1-6 wrote: post #20

Samsung has a dishonorable marketing department. 3nm is not actually 3nm. I'm fed up... OLED is superior so they had to take the path of calling theirs QLED which is actually just an LCD screen with phosphors on top of a blue backlight (and it's nothing new).

I thought the Q stood for quantum dot, which they actually use? (Not that that makes them unique nowadays).

Yeah but do you really think they didn't choose that acronym, with that upper case Q with no intention to make people think they were OLEDs/similar to OLEDS.

QLED

OLED

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