Report claims that Samsung Foundry has its first customer for 2nm production،
Rivalries exist everywhere, even in the world of technology. In the early days of home computing, it was IBM versus Apple. In 2010, we had Samsung versus Apple in the smartphone industry. And to show you how far we've come, the latest rivalry is in the complex world of chipmaking with Lays vs. Pringles TSMC vs. Samsung Foundry. Currently, Taiwanese company TSMC is the leader in the contract foundry space, attracting the most business from fabless chip designers such as Apple and Qualcomm.
Samsung Foundry reportedly receives its first order for 2nm chips
Japan's Preferred Networks (PFN), the first company to sign on the dotted line for Samsung Foundry's 2nm process node, is “rapidly realizing practical applications of deep learning and other emerging technologies to solve real-world problems that are difficult to solve with existing technologies,” says the company's website. Seoul Economic Daily claims that a deal between Samsung Foundry and PFN will benefit both companies.
PFN produces chips using the latest cutting-edge techniques, while Samsung Foundry enlists its first customer to book 2nm production. Samsung Foundry might have given a discount to PFN just to attract the customer and keep PFN away from TSMC. Samsung Foundry is expected to start mass production of 2nm chips in 2025.
Simply put, as the “size” of the process node decreases, the size of the transistors used with a chip also decreases, meaning there can be more of them inside the component. And the higher the number of transistors in a chip, the more powerful and/or energy efficient it is. We use this example all day, but it's a good one. In 2019, the 7nm A13 Bionic in the iPhone 11 series had 8.5 billion transistors inside each chipset. The 3nm A17 Pro that powers the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max contains 19 billion transistors in each unit.
