Samsung Could Start 2nm GAA Chip Mass Production In 2025

In the past few years, Samsung has witnessed a huge decline in its semiconductor chip foundry business. No major company has used the South Korean tech giant’s Foundry's 3nm and newer-generation 4nm process nodes. However, Samsung is still on track with the development of new chip process nodes, including 2nm nodes.

It is believed that the company will start mass production of second-generation 3nm chips in 2024 and 2nm chips in 2025. As per a new report from Business Korea, Samsung Foundry has a next-generation Gate All Around (GAA) technology in the works, which will be leveraged in the company’s 2nm process technology.

The mass production of the new semiconductor chips based on the new tech is expected to kick off in 2025. Samsung will reportedly put forward a paper on third-gen GAA technology at the VLSI Symposium 2024 expo.

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What Makes The New GAA Chips Unique?

GAA is a new kind of transistor that is capable of improving the current flow and power efficiency. It was first seen with the 3nm process node from Samsung Foundry. However, it wasn’t leveraged by any other chip maker, including Apple, AMD, MediaTek, Nvidia, and Qualcomm. 

The company’s in-house System LSI division is said to be the first to make use of Samsung Foundry's 3nm process for its next-gen Exynos chips for smartphones and smart wearables.

When speaking about efficiency, in comparison to Samsung Foundry's 5nm process, first-gen 3nm GAA chips occupied 16% less area, a performance boost of 23%, and 45% better power efficiency.

The second-gen 3nm process is said to offer a 35% area reduction, a 30% boost in performance, and 50% better power efficiency. Speaking of the third-gen GAA, which will be used for 2nm chips, will occupy 50% less area and have 50% higher performance.

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Samsung Profit Sees 933% Jump In Q1 2024

Samsung announced its financial results for Q1 2024, a few weeks after it revealed its revenue estimates. Samsung revealed that its revenue jumped 13% compared to the first quarter of 2023, while its profit jumped almost 10x (933%) compared to last year.

In Q1 2024, the company raked in KRW 71.92 trillion ($52.08 billion). That’s 13% more revenue from Q1 2023. This massive jump in profit is because of the higher memory chip and smartphone sales.

The company’s semiconductor memory chip business got back to making profits after almost a year of losses, all thanks to the boost in memory chip prices. Samsung’s home appliances, TV divisions, and smartphones also raked in higher revenue during Q1 2024.