Samsung Announces Mass Production of 2nd Gen 14-nm FinFET Process

And that's good news for AMD folks. Samsung announced that it has begun mass production of advanced logic chips utilizing its 14 nm LPP (Low-Power Plus) process, the 2nd generation of the company's 14 nm FinFET process technology.

In leading mass production of advanced FinFET logic process, Samsung announced in Q1 of 2015 the launch of the Exynos 7 Octa processor built on the industry's first 14 nm LPE (Low-Power Early) process. With the new 14 nm LPP process, Samsung continues to demonstrate its process technology leadership, and unparalleled performance and power efficiency for its Exynos 8 Octa processor and its many foundry customers including Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor uses Samsung's new 14 nm LPP process and is expected to be in devices in the first half of this year.

"We are pleased to start production of our industry-leading, 2nd generation 14 nm FinFET process technology that delivers the highest level of performance and power efficiency," said Charlie Bae, Executive Vice President of Sales & Marketing, System LSI Business, Samsung Electronics. "Samsung will continue to offer derivative processes of its advanced 14 nm FinFET technology to maintain our technology leadership."

Incorporating three-dimensional (3D) FinFET structure on transistors enables significant performance boost and low power consumption. Samsung's new 14 nm LPP process delivers up to 15 percent higher speed and 15 percent less power consumption over the previous 14 nm LPE process through improvements in transistor structure and process optimization. In addition, use of fully-depleted FinFET transistors brings enhanced manufacturing capabilities to overcome scaling limitations.

With its superb characteristics, 14 nm FinFET process is considered to be one of the most optimized solutions for mobile and IoT applications and is expected to meet growing market demand for a wide range of high performance and power efficient applications from network to automotive.