Samsung Announces Second-Gen 14nm Low Power Plus (14LPP) Process Now In Mass Production

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.