Samsung will reveal the improved 3nm and 4nm chip fabrication process by next month

VLSI Symposium is scheduled from June 11 to June 16, 2023, in Japan. It is basically a chip industry event. It is suggested that the South Korean tech giant will reveal its improved 3nm and 4nm chip manufacturing processes at the event. The improved 3nm chip is the second-gen while the 4nm chip process is the fourth-gen process by Samsung.

Both new processes are vital for the company as they could help with attracting more clients. Previously, Samsung used its 4nm process in Exynos 2200 and Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipsets. It received a lot of criticism from the experts as it was not efficient as TSMC’s 4m process. Notably the 4nm process by TSC was used for fabricating Dimensity 9000, Apple’s A16, Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, and Nvidia’s RTX 4000 series GPUs.

The new chips will be based on Samsung Foundry’s SF3 (3nm GAP) and SF4X (4nm EUV) processes

Samsung has used the 3nm GAP tech for the SF3 chip manufacturing process. It is reported to be an improved version of the SF3E process that was utilized for designing chips in H2 2022. In contrast, it relies on the company’s improved GAA (Gate All Around) transistor. Samsung has used the name MBCFETs (Multi-Bridge-Channel Field-Effect Transistors) for this transistor. Furthermore, the new node offers more optimization. As compared to the SF4, SF3 is reported to be more power-efficient. It offers 22% more power at the same clock speeds and transistor count.

Previously, some rumors indicated that the upcoming Exynos 2500 and Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 could be based on the SF3 process. In contrast to the second-gen 4nm SF4, the fourth-gen 4nm process offers 10% improved performance and 23% improved power efficiency. It is dedicated to usage in high-performance computing appliances like server CPUs and GPUs. The N4P (second-generation 4nm) and N4X (third-generation 4nm) nodes from TSMC, which will be available in 2024 and 2025, respectively, will compete with this new technology.

In accordance with AnandTech, SF4X is the first node from Samsung that has been introduced specially for high-performance computing. It suggests that it will help the company with more orders from consumers.