Samsung Preps 3nm Chips to Improve Smartphone Battery Life

The technology promises to churn out processors that use 50 percent less power than Samsung’s current 7nm chipmaking process, while offering a 35 percent performance increase. Expect it to go into mass production in 2021.

Samsung’s upcoming 3-nanometer chipmaking process might allow for smartphone processors that consume 50 percent less power.

Samsung expects to begin mass production of the 3nm chips starting in 2021, it said today. An improved variant of the 3nm chips will arrive in the following year.

The technology promises to churn out processors that use 50 percent less power than Samsung’s current 7nm chip-making process, while offering a 35 percent performance increase, executives with the company’s semiconductor business told journalists. In terms of surface area, the 3nm process will allow for chips that are about 45 percent smaller.

Whether device makers will use the technology is another matter. Samsung is developing it to lead in the computer processor industry at a time when Taiwan-based TSMC produces silicon for Apple, Qualcomm, Nvidia, and AMD. During the session, the company itself said TSMC’s semiconductor business is three times the size of its own.

However, Samsung expects to attract more customers with the upcoming 3nm chip-making technology. To create the next-generation silicon, the company is relying on its “gate-all-around” transistor architecture, a successor to the FinFETtechnology.

“Our research center has been struggling very significantly to find a new way of power reduction beyond 3nm,” said Samsung foundry marketing executive Ryan Lee. “Their solution was using gate-all around is the best way.”

Due to the power savings, the 3nm technology should appeal to mobile processor vendors, Samsung engineer Yongjoo Jeon told PCMag. The company also expects high-performance computing makers to consider building silicon with technology as well.

However, Samsung isn’t alone in trying to develop the technology. TSMC is reportedly spending $19.5 billion to build a new 3nm chip-making factory in Taiwan. One of TSMC’s biggest customers is also AMD, which has been competing with Intel to create faster and more power-efficient chips.