According to an article on sedaily.com (translated) Samsung is almost six months ahead of schedule with its 7nm EUV process technology and has managed to complete the development phase as well as secure its first customer in Qualcomm. Samsung is pushing hard and fast with its process technology as it competes with TSMC and other semiconductor foundries and has invested $6 billion in a dedicated EUV line at its foundry in Hwaseong, Korea that is slated for completion in the second half of next year with production ramp-up in 2020.

Reportedly, Samsung's first 7nm product will be a 7nm LPP (low power plus) node achieved using Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography or EUV. Samsung has set up production conditions and finalized the development of the 7nm EUV process on its Hwaseong S3 line which is located near the future site of the dedicated EUV line mentioned above. The engineers and designers that developed the 7nm process and production line have reportedly shared the design database and methodologies necessary to begin sample production for customers and have moved onto to developing Samsung's 5nm process (which is still in the early stages). Getting the EUV process up and running is an impressive feat and the expertise that Samsung is gaining will be a major breakthrough in the barrier to entry of single-digit nanometer processes.

Samsung has managed to build out 10 extreme ultraviolet lithography units and is allegedly on track to produce the Snapdragon 855 for Qualcomm towards the end of this year or early next year on its new low power 7nm process node. Note that previous reports suggested TSMC would be producing the Snapdragon 855 with SDX50 5G modem so we may have to wait to see how TSMC responds in readying production this year for confirmation on who ultimately wins Qualcomm's orders. As the node number are a bit of marketing speak (they can pick the features they want to measure for the marketing to an extent heh), Samsung notes that its 7nm process can produce dies about 40% smaller than its 10nm process. Further, the smaller process can offer 10% more performance or up to 35% more power efficiency at the same level of performance which will be a huge boost to mobile processors and products! Thanks to the smaller process node, smartphone and tablet manufacturers could produce devices with similar dimensions but larger batteries or thinner devices with the same amount of portable power (I'd vote the former, smartphones are already very thin).

Samsung hopes to press on and complete the development of its 5nm process next year and once the dedicated EUV line in Hwaseong is fully up and running in 2020 the company plans to start mass producing products for its customers on 7nm, 6nm, and 5nm processes!

In all, this is very good news for Samsung and the wider market in general as it will add competition and encourage TSMC, GLOBALFOUNDRIES, and even Intel (with its semi-custom stuff) to continue advancing what is possible and developing and refining the EUV and other even more exotic process technology methods that will be necessary for the extremely complicated and difficult problems they will face in moving beyond 5nm into 3nm and smaller nodes! We are definitely getting to a point where we will within the next decade have to figure out the once-impossible or reinvent the way we process information (e.g. quantum computing) to get things to go any faster. I am very excited and interested to see where the semiconductor industy and global computing as a whole will go from here!

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