Samsung Electronics said Wednesday that its Foundry unit has begun mass-producing system-on-chips based on its second-generation 10nm FinFET process, known as 10LPP (Low Power Plus). In addition, the company announced that its newest S3 manufacturing line located in Hwaseong, Korea, is now ready to ramp up production of silicon based on 10nm technologies, as well as newer solutions.
According to the OEM, chipsets manufactured on the 10LPP process can provide up to 10 percent higher performance and 15 percent lower energy requirements compared to the first-generation 10nm process technology known as 10LPE (Low Power Early). In addition, this type of a manufacturing process allows not only for reduced turnaround time from development to mass production, but can also contribute to a significantly higher manufacturing yield. It’s worth noting that the LPP (Low Power Plus) technology is not entirely new and has been previously used by Samsung Electronics for some of its previous 14nm chipsets from the Exynos 7 and 8 families. Nevertheless, this is the first time the LPP process is applied to the manufacturing of 10nm chipsets, whereas the existing Exynos 9 lineup powering the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy Note 8 series relies on 10nm LPE nodes.
The tech giant further revealed that it will continue to evolve the 10nm technology down to 8nm LPP, and added that its newest S3 manufacturing line located in Hwaseong, Korea, will also be responsible for the mass production of future chipsets based on 7nm FinFET EUV (Extreme Ultra Violet) technologies. As for SoCs built on 10LPP, Samsung claims that these chipsets will be used in devices planned for release in 2018 and will become widely available throughout next year. At the moment, the only chipset from Samsung known to be built on the 10LPP process is the yet-to-be-released Exynos 9-Series 9810 which should be showcased at the upcoming CES trade show in January. Not much is known in regards to the Exynos 9810, though the chipset will reportedly rely on both the Exynos M3 and ARM Cortex-A55 CPU cores while also featuring the ARM Mali-G72 graphics chip. It’s said to sport a Cat. 18 LTE modem with 6CA support and reports indicate that the silicon may be adopted by the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S9 flagship.