The South Korea headquartered giant is aiming to create silicon chips that are three nanometers (nm) in size
Samsung is gearing up for semiconductor wars with a humongous $116 billion budget. A report published in the Bloomberg notes that the company has allocated this budget to be used in next two years specifically for the development of 3nm silicon semiconductor chips.
It is worth mentioning here that the only 5nm chip available in the world right now, capable of powering an entire laptop, comes from the house of Apple’s ARM. The South Korea headquartered giant might be planning to take on the likes of TSMC.
TSMC, recently, has announced the news of setting up a semiconductor fab in the US. The company will be investing $12 billion for the development of the same. TSMC currently manufactures the bulk of its chips in Taiwan and has older chip facilities in China and Washington. Samsung’s semiconductor businesses had recently posted KRW 18.8 trillion in consolidated revenue and KRW 5.54 trillion in operating profit in the third quarter.
“Samsung aims to enhance its leadership in memory chips through expansion of next-generation process node, flexible production management to meet immediate demand and timely investment to address demand over the mid- to long-term,” the company had recently said in an official statement.
The company had also announced plans to expand its NAND flash production capacity in Pyeongtaek, Korea recently. Samsung Electronics’ System LSI Business Division might also be planning to supply its smartphone application processor (AP) Exynos chips to Chinese smartphone makers Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo in 2021.
Samsung’s 1080 AP, which is produced using the company’s 5-nm micro-fabrication process, will be used in Vivo’s 5G smartphone X60 and Samsung’s Galaxy A series. As per reports, the Exynos 1080 uses the Coretex A78 CPU from ARM of the United Kingdom, which performs 20 per cent better than its predecessor. The Mali G78 GPU shows a 25 per cent better performance than its predecessor. Industry sources say that the 1080 AP outperforms Qualcomm’s flagship AP Snapdragon 865.