Samsung Foundry started the production of 3nm chipsets last month. Yesterday they held a ceremony celebrating the shipment of the first batch of chips.
The 3nm chipsets come with a new process completely different from the usual FinFET design. This new process is called Gate All Around or simple GAA. Samsung has been researching this since the early 2000s and was experimenting with the design since 2017. Now they have finally started shipping chips with this technology.
Importantly, Samsung has beaten TSMC in shipping the 3nm fabrication process to the market. Compared to the FinFET process, GAA allows more control over the current flow. That means the chipset will be more power efficient.
TSMC will be using the FinFET process itself for its 3nm chipsets, and it is expecting to deliver those later this year. The Taiwanese independent foundry will start using the GAA process for its 2nm chipsets only, which it hopes to start deliveries on 2026.
Samsung is not making the 3nm chipsets for smartphone SoCs as of now. Instead, the chipsets are being shipped out to be used by cryptocurrency miners. But 3nm GAA process will be used by Samsung's own Exynos 2200 SoC. And Samsung would be hoping to get Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 also, especially when they lost Qualcomm with them choosing TSMC over Samsung for their latest flagship, Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1.
The 3nm GAA node from Samsung promises a reduction in power consumption by 45% and an increase in performance by 23% when compared to 5nm nodes.
Are these promises going to be met?
Samsung foundries have been going through a tough time, losing out on Qualcomm’s order for Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipsets to TSMC. And reports are claiming that Samsung itself will be resorting to Snapdragon chipsets for the next S series of smartphones.
The issues are the sub-par thermal efficiency and performance that chipsets with Samsung nodes suffer compared to its TSMC counterparts. A Twitter user has compared Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 and Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1, and the results speak for themselves.
It is to be seen that if the promises that Samsung makes for 3nm GAA nodes are kept, and if there really is an improvement in efficiency and performance. We will have to wait and see how these new SoCs with 3nm GAA nodes fares. After all, this is the first generation of the GAA nodes.
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