Samsung has started Finfet chip production at 14nm

Samsung claims to have started production of 14nm Finfet chips for an undisclosed customer. Production would have started much earlier than originally thought. The customer may be AMD, Qualcomm, or Apple.

The 14nm Finfet production is going ‘very well’ and Samsung is producing chips for a customer, Kim Ki-nam, CEO of Samsung’s chip branch told ZDNet. Furthermore, he did not reveal anything about the production and it is therefore unclear whether it concerns test production and for which customer it is. Initially, it was rumored that Samsung would not start 14nm Finfet production until the second half of 2015. TSMC announced that its 16nm Finfet mass production would also start around that time. The South Korean company has set itself the goal of acquiring significant market share from TSMC in partnership with Global Foundries.

Earlier reports spoke of Samsung making chips for Apple, Qualcomm and AMD, among others, using its new process. It is still too early for an Apple A9 soc of a new generation of iPhones and iPads, but it could be the S1 chips for the Apple Watch. Apple would thereby benefit from the improvements in consumption that the 14nm production entails.

According to Samsung, 14nm Finfet chips consume roughly 35 percent less than 20nm High-K-Metal-Gate variants, while the potential increase in performance would be 20 percent. The 14nm chips are 15 percent smaller. Intel is currently already producing at 14nm for its Broadwell chips, but the chip giant is already working on its second-generation Finfet, or Tri-Gate, production.

In short, Finfet is a type of transistor with a larger gate area because the gate of transistors is not fabricated over the channel, but lies around it. The transistors can switch faster and are more economical thanks to lower leakage currents.