Samsung Foundry is working hard on improving their manufacturing process with a steady pace. The company has announced that they've added 10nm FinFET process technology to their roadmap. Apart from that Samsung's first 16nm FinFET transistors should go into mass production in late 2016, which means the first products, based on this process will be available in 2017.

10nm fabrication is a big step for Samsung, since the entire process has to be reworked. There is a new back-end-of-line interconnect flow as well as new front-end-of-line features. This will help providing performance as well as power and area scaling. Apart from that it can be expected that this process allows for much smaller transistor fin, transistor gates and interconnects, compared to the 14nm process. A geometry shrink allows for performance increases, higher transistors density and reduced cost per-transistor, which is exactly what give a foundry a competitive advantage.

If under any circumstances possible, Samsung will use 10nm manufacturing process for their upcoming Galaxy S7 smartphone. Given the current roadmap this looks rather unlikely and it can be expected, that instead 16nm FinFET transistors will be used.




Source: KitGuru