Samsung has qualified its 8-nanometer chip-making process for production three months ahead of schedule. It’s the same “low power plus” (LPP) process used for its current 10-nanometer silicon, not the next-gen extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography for its future 7-nanometer tech. That’ll yield chips that are ten percent more energy efficient and ten percent smaller than the 10-nanometer ones it’s making right now. At the same time, since the 8-nanometer chips use the same process, Samsung will be able to “rapidly ramp up,” it said.
Samsung said that the new process will be ideal for “mobile, cryptocurrency and network/server” applications. It notably worked again with Qualcomm, its 10-nanometer chip launch customer, to perfect the new tech. Rumors in Korea had it that Qualcomm would switch its 7-nanometer production to TSMC, which is reportedly slightly ahead of Samsung in developing that tech.
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