The advertised size seems to mean less as time goes by, and it’s very difficult to compare them between companies, but Samsung is now celebrating the production of its first GAAFET 3 nanometer chips, arguably beating TSMC to the 3nm punch. That doesn’t necessarily mean that Samsung is poised to deliver better product performance and thermals with chips made on its new node, but it does open the door.
TSMC has been incrementally revealing more of its node roadmap in the last few months. Most recently, the company revealed it was planning five slightly different 3nm process nodes for subtly different use cases. TSMC is expected to enter production for the first of these 3nm nodes in the next few months, with market availability set for early 2023, according to Anandtech. But Samsung has leapfrogged the Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturer by starting production of its own 3nm chips.
Historically, Samsung’s nodes have been a little “behind” TSMC’s for the same advertised size. The rated nanometer numbers don’t quite mean what they did a couple of decades ago, with various other technologies having a substantial impact on a chip’s performance and thermal limitations. Samsung claims its 3nm GAAFET technology offers 45% improved power consumption, 23% increased performance, and 16% reduced area compared to an unnamed 5nm node. Samsung also has a second-generation 3nm process planned that it claims can reduce power consumption by 50%, improve performance by 30%, and reduce area by 35%.
GAA here stands for “Gate All Around,” a relatively new technology that changes the physical structure of the transistor gates in a way that can increase channel density. If you remember the term “FinFET,” this is sort of an evolution of that technology that can allow further increases in overall density and scaling. That can mean better performance or reduced power consumption, depending on how you use it. TSMC doesn’t plan to jump to GAAFET until its 2nm node enters production, anticipated to happen in late 2024.
According to Anshel Sag, Principal Analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy, the tenor of the announcement feels like a response to TSMC’s recent domination in the news:
I think the timing of this announcement and the fact that Samsung talked about multiple 3nm nodes feels like this is very much a response to TSMC’s 3nm roadmap, albeit with a lot less detail on all the different possible nodes.
Samsung says that its first 3nm chips will be used for unnamed high-performance, low-power computing applications with plans to expand to mobile processors, presumably including chips in smartphones. Samsung hasn’t revealed immediate partners or customers for the new node, but its customers in the past have included Qualcomm, a company that makes most of the smartphone chipsets here in the US. However, Qualcomm is rumored to have switched to TSMC to manufacture all of its 3nm chips going forward. Google also uses Samsung’s foundry to manufacture its Tensor chipsets in Pixels, but the Pixel 7’s Tensor is expected to be made on Samsung’s existing 4nm node, according to recent leaks.
Samsung is not likely to have issues selling its capacity given the chipset shortage and a report from DigiTimes earlier this year that it has over 100 customers clamoring to have chips made.
