Samsung is starting production of its 7-nanometer chip manufacturing process, which promises to improve the computing speeds and battery life of upcoming smartphones.
With the 7nm process, Samsung will be able to produce chips that are up to 20 percent faster and consume 50 percent less power than chips manufactured with the company's older 10nm process.
In addition, the 7nm process can shrink the chip's size by up to 40 percent, which can help pave the way for slightly thinner smartphones. Outside of mobile devices, the new manufacturing process will also be used to fabricate faster silicon meant for data centres and AI-powered software.
Samsung made the announcement as chip manufacturing rival TSMC has been signing up customers with its own 7nm process. Reportedly, TSMC is producing over 50 chip designs with the technology and has secured orders from Apple, AMD, Nvidia, and Qualcomm.
However, Samsung's 7nm process promises to stand out from the competition by streamlining the chip's manufacturing through a technology called EUV or extreme ultraviolet lithography. Existing chip-making processes require a complex series of steps to write all the tiny features on the silicon. However, Samsung's EUV technology was designed to reduce the processing time and limit manufacturing errors. For customers, this can mean reduced costs and higher chip yields.
Samsung has been researching the EUV technology since the 2000s. Initial production of the 7nm chips will begin in the company's Hwaseong factory in South Korea. The goal is to bring more EUV production online by 2020 to enable increased production of next-generation chip designs.
Over time, Samsung's chip manufacturing might also fuel ARM-based chips entering Windows PCs. In July, the Korean company and ARM announced they were partnering to build 3GHz plus computing for ARM's Cortex-A76 microarchitecture with the 7nm manufacturing process.