The other day, Jeong Gi-Tae, vice president of Samsung’s contract chip manufacturing division, said in an interview with The Elec that in the future SF1.4 process (class 1.4 nm), the number of channels in transistors will be increased, which will bring tangible benefits in terms of performance and power consumption three to four will provide. This will come three years after similar transistors from Intel launched, forcing Samsung to catch up with its rival.

Samsung was the first company to produce transistors with a gate (SF3E) that completely surrounds the channels in the transistors. This happened over a year ago and is used quite selectively. For example, such 3nm processes are being used to produce chips for cryptocurrency miners. In the new technological process, the channels in transistors are thin nanolayers placed on top of each other. Samsung transistors have three such channels surrounded by a gate on all four sides, so current flows through them under precise control with minimal leakage.

Intel, on the contrary, will start producing its first transistors with nanosheet channels in 2024, using the 2 nm RibbonFET Gate-All-Around (GAA) technology process. From the start there will be four nanosheet channels each. This means Intel’s GateGAA transistors will be more efficient than Samsung transistors of a similar design, can pass a higher current, and will be more energy efficient than its South Korean rival’s transistors. This will last about three years until Samsung starts producing chips via the SF1.4 process, which is expected in 2027. As is known, they will also be “quadruplets” – they will receive four channels instead of today’s three.

Another thing: will Samsung really lag behind Intel in terms of technology? By then, the South Korean company will have five years of experience in mass production of GAA transistors, while Intel will remain one of the newcomers. And not everything is quite simple with the production of such transistors, because Samsung uses this technical process very selectively. In any case, the transition to a new transistor architecture will be a significant breakthrough for the semiconductor industry and will allow for several more years to overcome the barrier at which traditional semiconductor production will cease to be at the forefront of progress.