Samsung's 8nm, 7nm, 4nm and 18nm FD-SOI

[lefty]

Interesting article at Semiengineering: Semiconductor Engineering .:. Samsung Unveils Scaling, Packaging Roadmaps - Semiconductor Engineering
Samsung foundry is to become a separate business group. More details about Samsung's 8nm, 7nm and 18nm FD-SOI.
To use gate all around transistors for 4nm in 2020.
Edit:
Also found this article: Samsung Targets 4nm in 2020 | EE Times
Samsung is using a proprietary deviant of gate all around transistors which they call multi-bridge channel FET (MBCFET)

 

[Lodix]

Sadly there is little to no info about the PPA improvements this nodes bring and the time to market.

 

[Scotten Jones]

8nm makes a lot of sense because Samsung is taking a big timing risk by tying 7nm to EUV. With TSMC ramping 7nm this year and a shrunk 7nm with EUV next year Samsung's 8nm is needed to fill the 2017 competitive gap.

The 18nm FDSOI announcement is a surprise, last I knew their follow-on to 28nm FDSOI would avoid multi patterning. Unless 18nm is a huge marketing stretch I would expect some multi patterning.

GAA in 2020 seems aggressive to me, it will be interesting to see if they can pull all of this off. I was expecting GAA from foundries around 2023.

 

[simoncc2]

Hi Scotten,

they said the 18 would use a 14nm BEOL. so yes double patterning.
Not sure why they don't call it 14 then or 12 like GF. Maybe the transistor remain the same but doesn't make sense either.

 

[Scotten Jones]

Hi Scotten,

they said the 18 would use a 14nm BEOL. so yes double patterning.
Not sure why they don't call it 14 then or 12 like GF. Maybe the transistor remain the same but doesn't make sense either.

Thanks, that is very helpful.

 

[benb]

I was looking back 3-6 years in the Semiwiki forums, looking at predictions versus reality. Predictions made 3 years ago were spot on (even when it seemed credulity-stretching 3 years ago). Based on the accuracy of predictions made 3 years ago, I think Samsung has a pretty good visibility on the next 3 years of process improvements. So I think we will be in a GAA world by mid-2020.

 

[Staf_Verhaegen]

they said the 18 would use a 14nm BEOL. so yes double patterning.
Not sure why they don't call it 14 then or 12 like GF. Maybe the transistor remain the same but doesn't make sense either.

Agreed on not making sense, more info needed. Just when you thought node naming could not become more inconsistent marketing proves otherwise...

 

[Fred Chen]

I found this foundry roadmap revelation less solid or substantial than coming from TSMC or Intel or even GlobalFoundries, for example, where some quantitative projections of density or PPA changes from node to node are given. In addition, there seems to be substantial overlap between what is called "8nm" and the previously announced 10nm LPU.

 

[TeemuSoilamo]

Sorry, dp.

 

[TeemuSoilamo]

Sadly there is little to no info about the PPA improvements this nodes bring and the time to market.

Right, but at least there's this little tidbit:

“From a time-to-market point of view, it is inevitable that Samsung must offer a relaxed 7nm technology, in response to TSMC’s aggressive 7nm DUV schedule before EUV becomes ready,” he said. “Customers could not fully rely on Samsung’s 7nm EUV-only schedule, which has uncertainty because of the the exact progress of ASML (on EUV). In a way, Samsung’s 8LPP node is a relaxed 7nm node, which should be equivalent to TSMC’s N7, and Samsung’s 7LPP should be equivalent to TSMC’s N7+.”