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Discussion Leading Edge Foundry Node advances (TSMC, Samsung Foundry, Intel) - [2020 - 2025]

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DisEnchantment

DisEnchantment

Golden Member
TSMC's N7 EUV is now in its second year of production and N5 is contributing to revenue for TSMC this quarter. N3 is scheduled for 2022 and I believe they have a good chance to reach that target.

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N7 performance is more or less understood.
1587739093721.png

This year and next year TSMC is mainly increasing capacity to meet demands.

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For Samsung the nodes are basically the same from 7LPP to 4 LPE, they just add incremental scaling boosters while the bulk of the tech is the same.

Samsung is already shipping 7LPP and will ship 6LPP in H2. Hopefully they fix any issues if at all.
They have two more intermediate nodes in between before going to 3GAE, most likely 5LPE will ship next year but for 4LPE it will probably be back to back with 3GAA since 3GAA is a parallel development with 7LPP enhancements.

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1587739615344.png

Samsung's 3GAA will go for HVM in 2022 most likely, similar timeframe to TSMC's N3.
There are major differences in how the transistor will be fabricated due to the GAA but density for sure Samsung will be behind N3.
But there might be advantages for Samsung with regards to power and performance, so it may be better suited for some applications.
But for now we don't know how much of this is true and we can only rely on the marketing material.

This year there should be a lot more available wafers due to lack of demand from Smartphone vendors and increased capacity from TSMC and Samsung.
Lots of SoCs which dont need to be top end will be fabbed with N7 or 7LPP/6LPP instead of N5, so there will be lots of wafers around.

Most of the current 7nm designs are far from the advertized density from TSMC and Samsung. There is still potential for density increase compared to currently shipping products.
N5 is going to be the leading foundry node for the next couple of years.

For a lot of fabless companies out there, the processes and capacity available are quite good.

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FEEL FREE TO CREATE A NEW THREAD FOR 2025+ OUTLOOK, I WILL LINK IT HERE
 
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igor_kavinski said:
Well, at least Intel is feeding her well!
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You should be less worried about what they're feeding her and more concerned with what she's feeding us.

It's a bit eccentric to list PPW numbers for nodes. Does she mean +x% performance @isopower? Or -y% power @isoperformance? I had a similar issue with some numbers TSMC released for N3B semi-recently where they weren't very clear about what they meant.
 
DrMrLordX said:
You should be less worried about what they're feeding her and more concerned with what she's feeding us.

It's a bit eccentric to list PPW numbers for nodes. Does she mean +x% performance @isopower? Or -y% power @isoperformance? I had a similar issue with some numbers TSMC released for N3B semi-recently where they weren't very clear about what they meant.
Click to expand...
Yeah, that was a terrible puff piece. Kind of surprised given Ian was conducting the interview.
 
Ajay said:
Kind of surprised given Ian was conducting the interview.
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He held himself back for the sake of getting future interviews 🙂

She was already looking at him with a certain dread in her eyes, probably thinking, "Oh dear! What is this PhD gonna ask me or make me spill???" 😀
 
Ajay said:
Hmm, wonder if that has something to do with next-gen NV GPUs coming in 2025.
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Could be. But generally I would assume that TSMC will be able to ship product for a customer ~6 months after start of high-volume manufacturing. So that date may have been set for reasons having nothing to do with NV (NV probably just announced their next-gen GPUs based on when they could get wafers, assuming NV is using N3P).
 
So Intel 3 and 18A not entirely new nodes. They are an 'upgrade' from Intel 4 and 20A respectively.

So what exactly is the upgrade? Power/Performance improvement? Density improvement? Optical shrink?

What is Intel 4 -> Intel 3 like?

N5 -> N5P?
N5 -> N4?
N5 -> N4P?
 
DrMrLordX said:
Intel 4+ = Intel 3
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That really doesn't explain the properties of the node.

N5 -> N5P : Performance/Power gain only

N5 -> N4 : Density gain by optical shrink, minor performance/power gain

N5 -> N4P : Major performance/power gain AND density gain by optical shrink

Could you give such a descriptor for Intel 4 -> Intel 3?
 
FlameTail said:
So Intel 3 and 18A not entirely new nodes. They are an 'upgrade' from Intel 4 and 20A respectively.

So what exactly is the upgrade? Power/Performance improvement? Density improvement? Optical shrink?

What is Intel 4 -> Intel 3 like?

N5 -> N5P?
N5 -> N4?
N5 -> N4P?
Click to expand...

I3 is the Intel's masterpiece of FinFET.
I4 is version 0.7 of I3, honestly, this is incomplete node (e.g. I4 doesn't have HD library).
This is why, Meteor Lake has LP-E cores in SoC tile.
 
FlameTail said:
That really doesn't explain the properties of the node.

N5 -> N5P : Performance/Power gain only

N5 -> N4 : Density gain by optical shrink, minor performance/power gain

N5 -> N4P : Major performance/power gain AND density gain by optical shrink

Could you give such a descriptor for Intel 4 -> Intel 3?
Click to expand...

Well either a). Intel improved performance, power, and density a wee bit or b). Intel improved performance at the expense of power and density. They've had a lot of + nodes in the past (notably various 14nm +s and 10nm+, 10SF, 10ESF/Intel 7, and "Intel Super 7"), so you should be looking at their past body of work and taking your guesses from there.
 
DrMrLordX said:
Well either a). Intel improved performance, power, and density a wee bit or b). Intel improved performance at the expense of power and density. They've had a lot of + nodes in the past (notably various 14nm +s and 10nm+, 10SF, 10ESF/Intel 7, and "Intel Super 7"), so you should be looking at their past body of work and taking your guesses from there.
Click to expand...
Isn't I3 supposed to be a high volume node with a long lifetime (for IFS)? If I am correct in that, then the quality of that node should be quite telling.
 
Ajay said:
Isn't I3 supposed to be a high volume node with a long lifetime (for IFS)? If I am correct in that, then the quality of that node should be quite telling.
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It's supposed to be the first node from IFS available for wide adoption. They've got 22FFL and Intel 16, and apparently at least one party is using Intel 4 for low-clockspeed/power comm gear (which is funny cuz that's a market where Ridge products were supposed to sell well. IFS undercutting Intel's own products?), but uptake on those has been low.
 
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