Samsung Announces Second-Gen 14nm Low Power Plus (14LPP) Process Now In Mass Production
by Andrei Frumusanu on January 14, 2016 6:40 AM EST
Today Samsung Semiconductor officialy announces mass production for its second generation 14nm FinFET manufacturing node. Early last year we saw Samsung announce mass production of its first generation FinFET process that was used in the Exynos 7420 which powered last year's flagships from Samsung Mobile and Meizu.
"We are pleased to start production of our industry-leading, 2nd generation 14nm 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 14nm FinFET technology to maintain our technology leadership."
The second generation process called 14LPP (Low-Power Plus) is advertised as bringing performance as well as power improvements over the 14LPE (Low-Power Early) predecessor. The new node is described as being able to increase switching speed of up to 15% and decreasing power consumption by up to 15%.
The improvements are made possible via transistor structure changes and process optimizations, for example we see usage of a taller fin height compared to that of 14LPE. Samsung has also improved silicon straining and describes usage of fully-depleted FinFET transistors being able to bring enhanced manufacturing capabilities.
The 14LPP process is confirmed to be used in Samsung LSI's own Exynos 8890 as well as Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820 SoCs, which we should be seeing more of in devices coming in the next months. As GlobalFoundries licenses Samsung's process node as we should also see CPU and GPU products from AMD produced on the new manufacturing node.
Source: Samsung
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lilmoe - Thursday, January 14, 2016 - link
If you don't mind me asking, which process was Apple's A9 based on? I already thought it was 14nm LPP?hlovatt - Thursday, January 14, 2016 - link
According to the article the existing process is called 14LPE (Low-Power Early)lilmoe - Thursday, January 14, 2016 - link
Well yeah, but I could swear 14nm LPP was mentioned in the A9's article...revanchrist - Thursday, January 14, 2016 - link
I could swear 7nm FunFiT was mentioned too.prtskg - Thursday, January 14, 2016 - link
While many people thought it was lpp, A9 used lpe. Since lpp has just entered volume production, it couldn't be used in A9.name99 - Thursday, January 14, 2016 - link
Throw in 15% from process and a few percent from tweaked internals and the A10 looks like an A8; about 25% faster, 15% of which comes from frequency.So A10 at maybe 2.2GHz, A10X at maybe 2.6 GHz.
That's pretty much what I expected, and this is about as close to confirmation as I think we'll ever get.
The real question, then remains what it was: whether TSMC and/or Samsung get to 10nm in time for the A11... (which suggests they get there before Intel --- cue the complaints about what does/does not count as "real" 10nm...)
khon - Thursday, January 14, 2016 - link
Good news, hopefully this means new Polaris GPUs before long, the move to 14nm is long overdue.Shadow7037932 - Thursday, January 14, 2016 - link
Is Samsung doing the AMD GPUs? I thought TSMC was doing that.The_Assimilator - Thursday, January 14, 2016 - link
GlobalFoundries is fabbing the low-end Polaris chips using Samsung's 14nm design (since they couldn't get their own right). TSMC's 16nm will still be used for the larger and more complex chips.mdriftmeyer - Thursday, January 14, 2016 - link
Wrong. AMD is using Samsung and Global Foundries across the board. TSMC is out. Nvidia is using TSMC exclusively.