Samsung’s public roadmap was presented recently at its Foundry Forum 2021 in China. Particularly conspicuous in its absence from the slide shown, however, was Samsung’s was its…
The big picture: Samsung’s upcoming 3nm-class lithography process will be their first to use gate-all-around (GAA) transistor technology. In the face of concerns raised about if the company will have GAA designs out in time to keep pace with competitor TSMC, it insists that its first iteration of the technology will begin mass production in 2022. Samsung’s public roadmap was presented recently at its Foundry Forum 2021 in China. Particularly conspicuous in its absence from the slide shown, however, was Samsung’s was its 3GAE (3nm, GAA-Early), the first iteration of 3nm technology.3GAE was originally revealed in 2019 alongside its follow-up,3GAP (3nm, GAA-Plus), but only the latter was shown off in the presentation. Prior to this roadmap being revealed, there had already been concern brewing over the health of the node; 3GAE had originally been planned for risk production in late 2020 and volume production in 2021, but the company only taped out its first 3nm test chips last month. Furthermore, Dr.
