Samsung has announced its manufacturing arm is leveraging its leading memory chip, foundry, and chip packaging services to provide a one-stop shop to speed up the production of AI chips. The move is expected to reduce manufacturing times by 20% to meet the increasing demand for AI chips.
Samsung is one of the few companies that design and sell memory chips and offers foundry services, all under the same roof. That combination hasn't exactly worked for Samsung in the past, as some clients were nervous about doing business with its foundry, which could benefit the company as a competitor in another field.
The surging demand for AI chips has since removed some of that uncertainty among clients, as the integration of AI chips within electronics, along with the ability to rapidly process vast amounts of data with lowered power consumption will be a strength for Samsung moving forward.
Samsung has also focused on the company's cutting-edge 3-nanometer process node that takes advantage of Gate-All-Around (GAA) transistor architecture. GAA is the successor to FinFET (Fin Field-Effect Transistor), a variation on traditional MOSFETs identifiable by the thin silicon "fin" inversion channel on top of the substrate, which allows the gate to make two points of contact.
GAA integrates many of the processes used to make FinFETs but takes its design and turns it sideways so the channels are horizontal instead of vertical. Instead of surrounding the channel on three sides, as in the FinFET design, GAA surrounds it on all four sides, which provides increased control of transistor switches.
GAA provides two unique advantages over FinFET, including mitigating current leakage because of the horizontal design, which places multiple nanosheet materials or nanowire fins on top of one another. That horizontal layout also facilitates higher current-carrying capacities over FinFET, which requires placing multiple vertical fins side by side to increase the flow of electricity.
Second, GAA transistors are surrounded by gates around all four sides, which improves the structure of a transistor by enabling a gate to contact all four sides of a transistor over the three found in the FinFET process. This means the GAA structure can control the current more efficiently over the FinFET design.
Samsung's MBCFET
Samsung unveiled its first GAA manufacturing technology back in 2022 with its Multi-Bridge-Channel FET (MBCFET) design, which utilizes nanosheets to gain higher performance and energy efficiency when compared to FinFET and traditional GAA technologies that employ nanowires with narrower channels. When it comes to nanosheets, their width determines their performance and power characteristics. This means the greater the width, the higher the performance at higher power. Conversely, transistor designs that require lower power consumption can utilize smaller nanosheets.
Samsung is currently in its third year of mass production for its MBCFET-based chips, which have significantly improved in both yield and performance. The company plans to produce its second-generation 3nm process (SF3) in the second half of this year.
What's more, Samsung recently unveiled a new process node that takes advantage of a 2nm process. The company's SF2Z features an optimized backside power delivery network (BSPDN) technology that places the power rails on the back of the chip to eliminate bottlenecks between the power and signal lines. The BSPDN technology in the SF2Z significantly boosts its power, performance, and reduced area when compared to other GAA platforms, and it is set for mass production in 2027.