Samsung is one of the leading semiconductor manufacturers. Six years ago it decided to get into the foundry business where TSMC is the largest company today. Samsung has now announced that it is ready to start mass production of new circuits at 28nm and 32nm nodes.
It actually looks like Samsung is the first to reach 28nm since GlobalFoundries and TSMC won’t have production lines for another couple of months. Samsung also took the time to develop a process for 32n, something TSMC and GlobalFoundries skipped in favor of 28nm. Although GlobalFoundries has a special process at 32nm tailored for AMD to use SOI and HKMG.
Samsung has produced the first circuits at 32nm and 28nm for 35 of its customers and many are lined up to be shipped before the end of the year. Both processes will use HKMG, a technology for lowering leakage and thus power consumption and is designed to be easy to adapt to for customers that want to shrink a circuit to 32nm or 28nm at Samsung.
I has also announced that it has started the first tests at 20nm, and the first products based on 32nm and 28nm from Samsung should be in products and available in stores in late 2011, early 2012. Samsung isnt known for being a foundry, but it is slowly climbing and will soon be the third largest after TSMC and GlobalFoundries.
Source: Samsung
