Samsung has announced that it has started mass producing the industry’s first 14nm FinFET application processors for mobile devices. Samsung claims that this technology, which will be used in the upcoming Exynos 7 Octa processor, provides highest levels of efficiency, performance and productivity. When compared to Samsung’s 20 fabrication process, the new 14nm FinFET process based chips are are claimed to be 20 percent faster and 35 percent more power efficient. Samsung was able to achieve this by opting for three-dimensional (3D) FinFET structure for transistors, which in turn allows overcoming performance and scaling limitations of the older planar structure based designs.
Gabsoo Han, Executive Vice President of Sales & Marketing, System LSI Business, Samsung Electronics said, “Samsung’s advanced 14nm FinFET process technology is undoubtedly the most advanced logic process technology in the industry. We expect the production of our 14nm mobile application processor to positively impact the growth of the mobile industry by enabling further performance improvements for cutting-edge smartphones.”
Samsung first presented the idea of 3D FinFET processor in 2003 at the IEDM (International Electron Devices Meeting), and since has filed for a number of key patents related to the technology. If you remember, Samsung has been mass producing 3D V-NAND products since 2013. It is expected that the 14nm FinFET-based Exynos 7420 processor, which will be used in the Galaxy S6 and the Galaxy S6 Edge, will be faster than the 20nm-based Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 SoC.
