Posted on Wednesday, March 22 2017 @ 15:24 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
EE Times
writes recent statements from Samsung suggest the company is ahead of TSMC in the race to 10nm process ramp, even though it was previously believed that TSMC was ahead of the competition.
Somewhat ahead of schedule, Samsung last week announced that it has shipped 70,000 wafers of 10-nm LPE (low-power early) chips, independent analyst Andrew Lu noted in a report for intelligence provider Smartkarma.
“The 10-nm schedule for Samsung seems to be ahead of TSMC's 10-nm ramp-up for MediaTek (after numerous design-win cancellations by MediaTek's 10-nm customers) and Huawei/HiSilicon,” Lu said in the report. Previously, it was widely believed that TSMC was ahead of the competition, according to Lu.
Additionally, the site points out the importance of the 6nm and 8nm nodes that were added to Samsung's roadmap. Traditionally, TSMC is the one offering half-node technology so Samsung's decision to introduce its own mid-node processes may hurt TSMC's competitive position.
