Samsung has announced that it has begun building chips using the 7-nanometer (nm) Low Power Plus (LPP) process with extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography technology. The firm said this advancement “provides customers with a definite path to 3nm.” With 7LPP, customers will be able to build new products that make increased use of 5G and AI. It will also be beneficial in the fields of enterprise, IoT, network, and the automotive industry.
Discussing the news, Charlie Bae, executive vice president of foundry sales and marketing team at Samsung Electronics, said:
“With the introduction of its EUV process node, Samsung has led a quiet revolution in the semiconductor industry. This fundamental shift in how wafers are manufactured gives our customers the opportunity to significantly improve their products’ time to market with superior throughput, reduced layers, and better yields. We’re confident that 7LPP will be an optimal choice not only for mobile and HPC, but also for a wide range of cutting-edge applications.”
With EUV lithography, Samsung is able to increase performance, battery life, and area efficiency over the 10nm FinFET process by 20%, 50%, and 40% respectively. This means that phone manufacturers will be able to ship devices with smaller batteries and reduce the weight and size of the phone if they want while maintaining current standards.
Samsung said it has been working on EUV since the 2000s. In order to get to where it is today, it said that it had to forge collaborative partnerships with industry-leading tool providers to design and build equipment that is now constructing the new chips. Samsung said it will roll out additional manufacturing capacity by 2020. This will include a new EUV manufacturing line for customers who need the new chips.