Samsung confirmed a couple of months ago that it would start manufacturing chips on the 5nm process node from Q2 2020. The Exynos 992 is expected to be built on this process technology. It’s the chip that we might find inside the Galaxy Note 20.
Can we expect it to be business as usual when it comes to progression? Will Samsung make chips on the 4nm process like its rival TSMC is expected to do by 2022? If a new report is to be believed, this is not going to be the case.
Samsung could skip the 4nm process technology entirely
According to a report out of Taiwan, Samsung has decided to skip the 4nm process entirely. It’s going to make the jump from 5nm to 3nm instead. There could be solid reasons as to why Samsung may decide to take this step.
Samsung continues to go up against TSMC which has already won significant orders for 5nm chips. The latter will make 5nm chips for the likes of Apple, Qualcomm and Huawei. Samsung hasn’t appeared to have won a lot of outside orders, but some reports have suggested that Qualcomm could split its 5nm Snapdragon x60 5G modem production between TSMC and Samsung.
The wish to direct resources to a more efficient process technology might have formed the basis of Samsung’s alleged decision to skip the 4nm process. There were reports last year, though, that Samsung expects the development of its 4nm process to be completed by the end of 2019. There haven’t been many updates on that since then.
Samsung may stick with 5nm production throughout 2021 and only start 3nm production in 2022. It was actually expected to introduce 3nm chips in 2021 but the COVID-19 crisis has apparently pushed the 3nm process node launch to the following year.
