Samsung Announces Second-Gen 14nm Low Power Plus (14LPP) Process Now In Mass Production
by Andrei Frumusanu on January 14, 2016 6:40 AM EST
Today Samsung Semiconductor officialy announces mass production for its second generation 14nm FinFET manufacturing node. Early last year we saw Samsung announce mass production of its first generation FinFET process that was used in the Exynos 7420 which powered last year's flagships from Samsung Mobile and Meizu.
"We are pleased to start production of our industry-leading, 2nd generation 14nm FinFET process technology that delivers the highest level of performance and power efficiency” said Charlie Bae, Executive Vice President of Sales & Marketing, System LSI Business, Samsung Electronics. "Samsung will continue to offer derivative processes of its advanced 14nm FinFET technology to maintain our technology leadership."
The second generation process called 14LPP (Low-Power Plus) is advertised as bringing performance as well as power improvements over the 14LPE (Low-Power Early) predecessor. The new node is described as being able to increase switching speed of up to 15% and decreasing power consumption by up to 15%.
The improvements are made possible via transistor structure changes and process optimizations, for example we see usage of a taller fin height compared to that of 14LPE. Samsung has also improved silicon straining and describes usage of fully-depleted FinFET transistors being able to bring enhanced manufacturing capabilities.
The 14LPP process is confirmed to be used in Samsung LSI's own Exynos 8890 as well as Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820 SoCs, which we should be seeing more of in devices coming in the next months. As GlobalFoundries licenses Samsung's process node as we should also see CPU and GPU products from AMD produced on the new manufacturing node.
Source: Samsung
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extide - Thursday, January 14, 2016 - link
This is what was originally reported, but a few places are now confirming that it will be 14nm only, and pretty much it will all be GF.rocketbuddha - Thursday, January 14, 2016 - link
http://www.amd.com/en-us/press-releases/Pages/amd-...AMD clearly states that Polaris is using 14nm FinFET confidently even in the Title. So that means TSMC is out for Polaris.
Since it is mid 2016, assuming that GloFo, which has licensed Samsung's 14nm FinFET technology, is setting up LPP lines for that, which means that it might be in LPP.
Looking at the timelines for Zen, it looks highly to be 14nm LPP rather than 14nm LPE if it were to be fabbed at GF or SMSNG.
extide - Thursday, January 14, 2016 - link
I could be wrong, but I think GF went straight to LPP, and totally skipped LPE. Future AMD CPU/GPU's will definitely be at least LPP, or possibly a future revision even.prtskg - Thursday, January 14, 2016 - link
No. LPE entered volume production in GF in Q2.http://fudzilla.com/news/processors/37647-globalfo...
LPP was to start volume production in December or in early 2016. There isn't any news that it has started volume production yet.
Yojimbo - Sunday, January 17, 2016 - link
Why would AMD be using "low power" anything for their desktop GPUs and CPUs? The foundry announcement that would be more pertinent would be one mentioning "high performance" or the like. Anyway, hasn't AMD already indicated that Polaris would be out "for the back to school season"? I don't know the context of that statement but if it was a neutral (non-leading) context then that seems to suggest July-August.Yojimbo - Sunday, January 17, 2016 - link
Nevermind, I was wrong.From http://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/foundry/proce...
"14LPP (Performance boosted edition) is the 2nd FinFET generation which the performance is enhanced up to 10%. 14LPP is the single platform for every application designs with the improved performance for computing/Network designs and the lowered power consumption for Mobile/Consumer designs. 14LPP will be the main process technology offering in 2016 and after."
prtskg - Thursday, January 14, 2016 - link
Samsung now calls LPE 'early edition' and LPP 'performance boosted edition'. Officially low power early and low power plus aren't used as it causes confusion to some people that these nodes aren't geared for high performance chips. So I think tech sites should update themselves too.http://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/foundry/proce...
zodiacfml - Thursday, January 14, 2016 - link
What people? I don't know how this would matter to some people unless the change is targeted to investors.prtskg - Friday, January 15, 2016 - link
People who invest, people who follow tech, everyone. Why should we use an 'old' term when it isn't a good one?Yojimbo - Sunday, January 17, 2016 - link
Ahh, thanks