5 ms·

Samsung Foundry unveiled aggressive roadmap scaling down to 4nm

36 points by SemiTom 9y ago

Nanite 9y ago
Note that semicon roadmaps nowadays are primarily a marketing tool, There's a strong disconnect with current and near future state of the art engineering capabilities. the newly spun-out Samsung foundry company is going head to head with TSMC and Intel, and they will promise anything as all parties are aiming to lock in as many as possible customers into their proprietary workflows.
SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
What are the nm even measuring anymore -- or is it just a numbering thing, so 4 is better than 10 is better than 14 is better than 22?
- lgats 9y ago
  nm is short for nanometers. In this case, it's a measurement of the precision to which the transistors can be etched into the chips. The higher precision you have, the more complex you can make the chip.
  - SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
    But what is it measuring? The +/- on specified dimension, the minimum width of a feature, or....what?
    - astrodust 9y ago
      Typically it's "feature pitch", or an overall scale of the various features involved in producing a transistor like width and height. You can see more on the breakdown on pages like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10_nanometer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10_nanometer It's more a marketing term since no particular component is exactly 10nm, but it's based on a composite of the features involved.
    - laxatives 9y ago
      Inverse company marketing aggression.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
- simooooo 9y ago
  The wire thickness far as I know.
- trsohmers 9y ago
  It is all marketing bullshit at this point. TSMC's 12nm process is a rebranded version of their 16FFC low power flavor, with literally no other changes other than name so that they can market as being smaller than Samsung/Global/Intel's 14nm processes. All of the foundries are just naing the newest node roughly in line with the original ITRS roadmap names, even though the smallest feature sizes on the most advanced node in mass production at the moment (Intel's 14nm, which is a good 20%-30% smaller feature sizes than Samsung's "10nm") is around 42nm (source: http://images.anandtech.com/doci/8367/14nmFeatureSize.png http://images.anandtech.com/doci/8367/14nmFeatureSize.png)
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- SemiTom 9y ago
  This article "How Many Nanometers" discusses this http://semiengineering.com/how-many-nanometers/ http://semiengineering.com/how-many-nanometers/

36 points by SemiTom 9y ago

Note that semicon roadmaps nowadays are primarily a marketing tool, There's a strong disconnect with current and near future state of the art engineering capabilities. the newly spun-out Samsung foundry company is going head to head with TSMC and Intel, and they will promise anything as all parties are aiming to lock in as many as possible customers into their proprietary workflows.

SomeStupidPoint 9y ago

What are the nm even measuring anymore -- or is it just a numbering thing, so 4 is better than 10 is better than 14 is better than 22?

lgats 9y ago
nm is short for nanometers. In this case, it's a measurement of the precision to which the transistors can be etched into the chips. The higher precision you have, the more complex you can make the chip.
- SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
  But what is it measuring? The +/- on specified dimension, the minimum width of a feature, or....what?
  - astrodust 9y ago
    Typically it's "feature pitch", or an overall scale of the various features involved in producing a transistor like width and height. You can see more on the breakdown on pages like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10_nanometer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10_nanometer It's more a marketing term since no particular component is exactly 10nm, but it's based on a composite of the features involved.
  - laxatives 9y ago
    Inverse company marketing aggression.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
simooooo 9y ago
The wire thickness far as I know.
trsohmers 9y ago
It is all marketing bullshit at this point. TSMC's 12nm process is a rebranded version of their 16FFC low power flavor, with literally no other changes other than name so that they can market as being smaller than Samsung/Global/Intel's 14nm processes. All of the foundries are just naing the newest node roughly in line with the original ITRS roadmap names, even though the smallest feature sizes on the most advanced node in mass production at the moment (Intel's 14nm, which is a good 20%-30% smaller feature sizes than Samsung's "10nm") is around 42nm (source: http://images.anandtech.com/doci/8367/14nmFeatureSize.png http://images.anandtech.com/doci/8367/14nmFeatureSize.png)
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
SemiTom 9y ago
This article "How Many Nanometers" discusses this http://semiengineering.com/how-many-nanometers/ http://semiengineering.com/how-many-nanometers/