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Perhaps 7/6 is judged to bifucate either to interest in low cost 8LPP or 8LPU, while n5/4 process is capturing more perf or density oriented projects, and n7/6 fab capacity is being refurbished to match?
My guess is that "the issue" is from SF4 family being a heavily souped up offshoot of SF7. My understanding is 6LPP was never a thing samsung ramped (just like 7LPE). Given the high degree of tool fungibility (main difference should just be in the contact segment), and Samsung's more limited leading edge logic capacity, I wouldn't be surprised if Samsung wants to push their customers onto the higher density/ASP SF4 family to both accelerate yield learning and minimize logic capex. It would also explain why they want to triple their logic capacity of the next decade (or whatever the timeframe for that goal was). Samsung claims that SF5 is DR compatible with SF7 and that SF4 is a relatively easy port job. If this is the case, then there doesn't seem to be any reason to run any new SF7 products. Customers and Samsung are both better off using SF5/4 (assuming the defect density and parametrics/variability are in or soon to be in control).
I think Samsung runs one MPW for each full-node changes. 14nm, 8nm(10nm family), 5nm(7nm family), 4nm(Full node from 7nm. it was announced as 5nm half node at first, but updated later)
