Semiconductor superpower: Will Samsung beat TSMC with the world's first 3nm chip?

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techwireasia.com, May. 27, 2022 – 

• The competition between Samsung and TSMC is intensifying as the former is expected to initiate the world's first 3nm process-based mass production in a few weeks.
• TSMC has said that its 3nm with FinFET architecture will enter mass production in the second half of the year.
• Samsung's 3nm will be the world's first node to use gate-all-around field effect transistors, abandoning the FinFET transistor process.

South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics Co has always lagged behind the world's largest contract manufacturer of semiconductor chips, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TMSC), when it comes to sales. However, the pandemic has set an urgency among all industry players to be quick and adaptive, and by doing so, Samsung would soon enough surpass TSMC when it comes to conquering the 3nm process technology.

Typically the smaller the process node number, the higher the transistor count. That is important because the higher the transistor count, the more powerful and energy-efficient a chip is. At present, the mainstream process technology in the industry is 5nm, which is used for the likes of Samsung Galaxy S22 and Apple iPhone 13.

Therefore, as transistor sizes continue to shrink, Samsung is expected to be the first foundry to roll out 3nm chips in the coming weeks. On top of moving to the next process node, Samsung will also be using its latest transistor design known as Gate all-around (GAA) while TSMC, which is expected to begin the mass production of 3nm in the second half of 2022, will still be using the older FinFET design.

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