Samsung Electronics on Thursday announced that it has started mass production of its 2nd generation 14nm FinFET process technology. The silicon chip manufacturer especially noted that it would be making the next big Qualcomm chip, the Snapdragon 820 — handing it a contract worth over $1 Billion at the satrt of this new year.
Until now, Qualcomm depended on Tawian Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) for its chip building process. Unfortunately, last year’s flagship from the company had many issues either due to design or build problems. The issues included reports stating the chips were overheating and underperforming.
Due to this, or any other reason the chipmaker thought was important, this year’s flagship contract was won by Samsung Electronics. The Snapdragon 820 is expected to run on most of the high end devices which will be released during the first half of this year. The tech giant stated that the tech used in the Snapdragon 820 is exactly the one Samsung uses for its Exynos line-up.
We are pleased to start production of our industry-leading, 2nd generation 14nm FinFET process technology that delivers the highest level of performance and power efficiency,
said Charlie Bae, Executive Vice President of Sales & Marketing, System LSI Business, Samsung Electronics.
Samsung will continue to offer derivative processes of its advanced 14nm FinFET technology to maintain our technology leadership.
Samsung and Qualcomm have, until now, been rivals in the semi conductor chip business. The latter builds chips for most of its own devices and has also won deals with the likes of Apple to produce their A-line of processors for the iPads and iPhones.
Estimates by analysts show that this deal might be worth over $1 billion for Samsung which will lay a zero-ground that could propel the Korean giant into high profits this year.
The new process incorporates three-dimensional (3D) FinFET structure on transistors which enables significant performance boost and low power consumption. The performance boost and reduction in power consumption are both stated to be around 15% each. This technology is considered to be one of the most optimized solutions for mobile devices.
Also, this deal not just benefits Qualcomm, Samsung will be in a win-win situation too. What with the profits and the new technology that it can base the Exynos 8 processors. Qualcomm also stated that Samsung will be the sole producer of the Snapdragon 820.
