Samsung Foundry Forum announcements(news.samsung.com) |
Samsung Foundry Forum announcements(news.samsung.com) |
I believe GAA is the next gen tech for the node process. Samsung is the first foundry to do GAA w/3nm while TSMC is sticking w/FinFET for their 3nm. It'll be interesting to see how 3nm FinFET compare to 3nm GAA.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/16041/where-are-my-gaafets-ts...
edit:
>After that, transistor structures begin to change. Samsung and TSMC are manufacturing chips at 7nm and 5nm based on today’s finFETs. Samsung will move to nanosheet FETs at 3nm. Intel is also developing GAA technology. TSMC plans to extend finFETs to 3nm, and then will migrate to nanosheet FETs at 2nm around 2024.
https://semiengineering.com/the-increasingly-uneven-race-to-...
Samsung Foundry have a history of over promise and under deliver. This 3nm launch will likely be similar to their EUV node which they claim to be industry first but wasn't shipping in any real volume. So arguably they are not lying, but it is a marketing spin.
TSMC is an extremely pragmatic company. It either work or it doesn't, there is no need to save faces. No need to push industry first GAA or FinFET, push for whatever it works within the timeframe with respect to yield and cost. What is the point of having the best tech in 2022 when they cant produce it with enough volume that any of their customer would want?
That is not to say Samsung Foundry are evil or anything, they are pushing very very hard to try and catch up to TSMC and stays competitive in the market. ( Look at what happen to Global Foundry ). And now Intel is coming. Pat Gelsinger seems to be doing all the right thing.
After listening into their earnings call, their CEO really pushes aside quick profits (such as raising prices) and prefers long-term stability and keeping their existing clients happy. The investors wanted TSMC to raise chip prices and expand their operations.
What is the point of having the best tech in 2021 if all capacity is allocated to a single customer?
Intel has loads of cash and would pay that money in a second, but I suspect that most other companies would rather hold off a bit longer in exchange for much cheaper products.
Comparing Apples to Oranges, and doing doing a comparison on taste vs. size.
The device may well be awesome, but first ICs using it not so.
The biggest advancements in under 14nm were in metal, not so much with the device, process, or materials.
Even if Samsung will produce a better device design, they will still have to catch up to TSMC in so many, many other areas.
Only single digit number of people on this planet will ever know the exact measurements of FinFet vs. GAAFet
But one thing for sure, Samsung saying that they pioneered a new device ahead of TSMC does indeed sound very, and impressive to a certain category big co. people regardless of actual performance.
In this case,
Samsung's 3nm = Intel's 7nm
I am still waiting for a standard based on transistor density numbers!
Some vertical distances, e.g. thicknesses, are indeed of only a few nm, but the process size name always referred strictly to horizontal distances (i.e. parallel with the wafer surface), which are determined by lithography. Those are at least 10 times larger, in the range 25 nm to 60 nm for modern processes.
There are a few horizontal distances that are not determined by lithography, i.e. they do not correspond with something drawn on the mask, but the distances are determined by speeds of corrosion or diffusion, like also for the vertical dimensions, but those also do not count for naming processes, because you could have such a distance of only e.g. 5 nm even in an 180 nm process. Those distances that are not determined by lithography do not influence the potential density of a circuit but only certain electrical performances.
It’s allowed, as many, many, many other bad things in this world are.
Off the back of this episode, I can't help but feel TSMC's monopoly needs disrupting with players like Samsung to contend with Taiwan & China's geopolitical tension.
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/samsung-foundry-to-produce...
Is transistor density the best measure of chip competitiveness these days?
With theoretical organic 1-electron designs you can build a transistor out of 4 carbon atoms. But nobody knows how to mass produce those ones.
We are somewhere on the middle, modern designs did break the 10nm barrier, but are not nearly as small as those numbers you see around.
Even if you pay [€$]1000+ for one of their Smart Phones, you can look forward to:
* Uninstallable cruft, as if they were a telcom and you were on a contract and had not just handed over a grand
* ...like a confusingly-similar-looking competitor to Google Contacts that will upload your info to their servers
* GDPR? LOL
* A hard button on the side of your phone located just below the "volume down" button, easy to press accidentally, that is hard-coded and unconfigurable, that will launch their AI assistant Bixby. Don't want to use Bixby? Tough shit. Nothing you can do about it.
* Constant badgering by the phone's native notification to sign up for "Samsung Members", a social media platform. No, you can't turn that off.
* Other, similar bullshit.
3nm? These are such sketchy practices I cannot imagine it won't affect, say, their high-end TVs (they would totally monitor your house and show you advertisements).
Seriously, avoid that company. No, paying for their high-end options will not insulate you from their nonsense.
My Galaxy Buds Plus are pretty good and have unparalleled battery life - but you can’t use the companion app on Android because it won’t work unless you give it access to your contacts.
My Samsung TV is quite snappy and, besides my model being a special edition that doesn’t come with Bluetooth and them not specifying it anywhere, it’s actually pretty alright. Cold-boots quickly, has a snappy UI, theoretically comes with all the smart features you want ... but it’s full of ads the moment you enable internet access, plus you know the spying allegations. I guess I’ll still have to figure out proper firewall rules.
I’m going to guess that their other appliances are similar. Pretty good hardware, pretty good software underpinnings, just severely held back by some anti-consumer software decisions.
Apple does something similar. Every now and then I get a notification about "try tv+/arcade/music for x months".
Or few years back when wallet was launched, daily notifications to add my card.. in a country that doesnt support apple wallet.
That button is actually my favorite feature of the phone and it'll be very hard to give up. Obviously I'm not using it for Bixby. I have it mapped to play/pause on long press, toggle flashlight on double press and as a secondary unlock/lock button on simple press.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jamworks.b...
Works fine on my S10, ymmv.
Edit: And yes, the pre-installed crap is super annoying. You can remove some, but not all of it via adb, it's a hassle. Samsung is hardly the only offender in this regard, though they may be among the worst (aside from Google and Apple which get a free pass).
You can turn off sync. Same as Google.
Samsung software isn't worse than Apple or Google IMO.
It's a stretch to blame that on Samsung, processor generations described in nanometres haven't been based on actual component size for years now, by any manufacturer.
Then again, the nanometer sizes aren't always completely indicative of performance and aren't necessary to be used in any capacity when actually using a computing device, so maybe it's not as bad.
Dishonest marketing, though? Most certainly.
You still need to somewhat segment into low/medium/high power chips when comparing them though as it's generally not possible to just take a very high perf/watt low power part and scale up the same design with the same level of efficiency.
To be fair, I read the Xnm labelling is pretty much pure marketing at this point - since 45nm; https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/technology_node#Meaning_lost
Intel 4 was estimated to be up to 200M gates/mmsq. I don't think we have exact numbers since Intel only released numbers for their previous 10nm plan, which were heavily revised for Tigerlake iirc. I think Intel 3 is a variant of Intel 4 so 3GAA will presumably be similar to Intel 3.
edit: slides of the 3nm conference yesterday https://twitter.com/stshank/status/1445924295121592321/photo...
then there was windows. have you actually heard an elite hipster tell you, a professional highly paid tech guy, that mac is superior because windows is behind on operating systems? not because unix is better. no, because windows was "8" and mac was "10." X is the roman numeral for "10" you see, and 10 is a later version than 8. So ms ended up skipping windows 9.
There was a defined standard for process sizes. A bunch of unethical marketing scammers used half-truths to scam people. It worked, because people can't even figure out a hamburger. And now the people who followed the long-established standard have to switch to the scammer's standard, because they still need that hamburger guy's money.
Here's the problem with customers... You need their money.
Intel has renamed their node so the industry has now pretty much standardise on naming. Where all 3nm from Samsung, TSMC and Intel will have similar transistor density. ( But not similar performance or any other characteristic )
Officially Intel doesn't use 4nm or 3nm, they call it Intel 4 or Intel 3. But for the sake of easier comparison most people still use Intel 4nm to describe it.
Creating chips with an accuracy of 1nm does not mean 1nm transistors.
But 1nm sounds good as marketing.
See — you rarely ever see so much marketing money spent on an industrial service, and like here seeing Hollywood level gfx on an obscure industry event keynote would've been more laughable than noteworthy 10 years ago.
Without these cash piles, there is no way to finance new fabs, and SEL is fighting for its survival here. Once you are out of the race in semi industry, you can never catch up.
I wonder if that is some kind of cultural shift that is taking place that started around 2009, or if it's always been like this and I just never noticed.
BMW model numbers used to more or less accurately reflect engine sizes, not anymore, it's just numbers now.
2G, 3G, 4G used to mean something, not anymore.
I could add a remark about the federal reserve, but... I'll just stay away from that. Don't want to be too edgy/turn this into a political discussion (I just think it's interesting from a cultural perspective).
It's like we collectively decided that "it's just numbers, man."
You can get arbitrarily small at the cost of exploding count of masks. I.E. double patterning needs 2X masks, but quad patterning needs 8X. Octuple patterning is completely impractical.
Effects are moderately visible and have to be counteracted at 5nm. I heard some rumours about 7nm, but cannot confirm any countermeasures were taken to avoid quantum effects.
It should be noted that "3nm" is now purely for commercial reasons and has no relationship to the size of transistors on board.
Gate leakage is the phenomenon of quantum tunneling through the gate dielectric barrier and started appearing as gate dielectrics became thinner and thinner. Gate leakage was mitigated by moving to higher k dielectrics (from silicon dioxide, SiO2, to more exotic materials that include other elements such as Hafnium).
Higher k dielectrics allow for the same capacitance per unit area and channel control with a thicker physical gate compared to plain SiO2, reducing gate leakage. This technology change came along with metal gates (which used to be polysilicon) and were a combined advance that Intel incorporated a few years before before TSMC, IIRC circa 2008.
This is a circuit designer's perspective. Someone who actually understands device physics and material properties can chime in to correct me.
People should really listen to earning calls, it shows the company's true character. From Nvidia, Intel, AMD or Apple. I have yet to see any media does a decent job and translating it to mainstream news. Mostly because Tech news (site) aren't really focused on Finance and only cares about the tech, while Finance / Investors doesn't care or known enough about about Tech and wouldn't cover it in the Finance news.
> and prefers long-term stability and keeping their existing clients happy.
That is why people partner with TSMC. As Morris Chang calls it the Grand Alliance. Unlike Samsung and Intel, TSMC is Pure Play, which means they dont have chips that compete with their clients. They are also transparent about their progress. TSMC originally put GAA on 3nm, but it was clear the tech isn't going to be mature enough in time. So they changed it to something else. Let their customer knows, let them decide if they should move on to a more mainstream node like a cost reduced 4nm, or stick to leading edge on 3nm FinFET.
Unlike Intel which lied to all of their Custom Foundry partners leaving some of them with a two years 5G delayed rollout. Or Samsung which despite having the cheapest per wafer, the cost advantage doesn't translate well when you dont have enough of them for your inventory needs.
Whatever the ratio was, it seemed to be roughly consistent going back like 30 years, which surprised me.
So now I don't believe there actually has been a drift towards marketing and inaccuracy. And believe the details of what kind of cells is just excessive precision.
https://semiwiki.com/semiconductor-manufacturers/302408-tsmc...
That is how it works in literally all other industry supply chain.
If others were willing to paid, take the risk and book in advance they will have the capacity the need. But rarely anyone was will to pay the price premium. They wait for it to become a little more mainstream.
And that goes for all of their product lines across the board. It's all garbage software. Its a shame they intentionally cripple excellent hardware with crap
Until they stop that practice they are not even a potential option for me. I don't get why they can't save the money and just make a good pure Android experience
The options are “I agree to everything” or “Keep bugging me until I agree to everything”.
Poor lighting in this room, taken w/ an iPhone 12 Mini. Just grabbed the first result of "50% gray screen" from youtube.
I can see some vertical stripes if I look closely, but that seems to be general aging and not burn in. At least I can't think of any images that could have burned in that pattern with what I've used the screen for. Tbh this picture makes it look worse than it appears but you'll just have to take my word on that. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ This TV has gotten a lot of (ab)use, much more than a typical home I would think.
I'm glad you suggested this test because now I have some fuel for upgrading in 2022. ;) I wouldn't say the aging I can see from this test is noticeable in most cases, but it's a tool I'll use in the future to see how the striping worsens.
I went ahead and ran a pixel test and they're all working fine still. Maybe LG has been cutting costs as their OLED lines have matured? Or it could be bad luck of the draw.
People with no scruples realized it's easier/cheaper to confuse and persuade people something is better than actually producing something better and that conventional wisdom was wrong.
It's a lot easier to invest in propoganda that convinced improved perceived value than actual value. It's win-win, the consumer thinks they're happy and the producer doesn't have to deal with the mess of hurdles in reality to continue to make money. Conventional wisdom says people are smart and will see through your snake oil, meanwhile, empirical data says people will drink the snake oil if you tell them it's from the fountain of youth.
So, yeah. This is nothing new. Marketers gonna market.
Did they really, though?
2G was accurately labeled (in my experience), sure, but I remember when Verizon started relabeling their HSPA+ (3G) stuff as 4G in my hometown. Not even "4G LTE" (which allowed them to get away with it since it's not actually 4G), they just straight up called it 4G on my Motorola Droid Turbo. When I rooted it, I found out exactly what it was connected with and learned it was all a lie. (When I actually did experience real 4G, the speed difference was shocking.)
AT&T relabeled their 4G network as 5G fairly early on. [0] Then, Verizon decided to copy them. [1] But this wasn't a trend that started with 5G.
[0]: https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/20/21265048/att-5g-e-mislead...
[1] https://telecoms.com/505584/verizon-told-to-stop-lying-about...
> I wonder if that is some kind of cultural shift that is taking place that started around 2009, or if it's always been like this and I just never noticed.
> BMW model numbers used to more or less accurately reflect engine sizes, not anymore, it's just numbers now.
When was that and which number? Just looking at the 7 series (surely you didn't mean that number) the E32 build between 86 and 94 had engine sizes between 3 and 5 liters.
> 2G, 3G, 4G used to mean something, not anymore.
So what did the G mean? AFAIK it was generation, but that's a very vague term. Just look at human generations, people are born continously, so you could have two people who are the same age but technically a generation apart because one had very old parents and the other has very young parents/grandparents are they the same generation?
> I could add a remark about the federal reserve, but... I'll just stay away from that. Don't want to be too edgy/turn this into a political discussion (I just think it's interesting from a cultural perspective).
> It's like we collectively decided that "it's just numbers, man."
>The required utility resources are significantly larger for EUV compared to 193 nm immersion, even with two exposures using the latter. Hynix reported at the 2009 EUV Symposium that the wall plug efficiency was ~0.02% for EUV, i.e., to get 200-watts at intermediate focus for 100 wafers-per-hour, one would require 1-megawatt of input power
The optical train is also tough. 13nm is getting close to soft x-rays, and photons that hot don't like reflecting, and the optics are rapidly degraded by exposure light:
>EUV collector reflectivity degrades ~0.1-0.3% per billion 50kHz pulses (~10% in ~2 weeks), leading to loss of uptime and throughput [...] Due to the use of EUV mirrors which also absorb EUV light, only a small fraction of the source light is finally available at the wafer. There are 4 mirrors used for the illumination optics, and 6 mirrors for the projection optics. The EUV mask or reticle is itself an additional mirror. With 11 reflections, only ~ 2% of the EUV source light is available at the wafer.
Basically everything about the process is absurd, not sure why pushing on the light source is less feasible then any of the other knobs
Using a smaller wavelength is kind of useless for the optical lithography, as below this photons will make too many secondary electrons which will reduce the effective resolution. This is the reason X-ray lithography went nowhere.
This is why the ultimate limit of 157nm lithography was also not so far away from EUV. Also somewhere in between 25nm-30nm
This is also why some people suggest resurrecting 157nm — getting nearly same half pitch without maintenance, and expensive tooling of EUV.
At some point it’s switching from ‘lots of wiffle balls in a stream’ to ‘high power machine gun fire’, and the physical properties of everything involved become very limiting.