Samsung's 7nm factory is completed!

In the current advanced process field of global wafer manufacturing, only TSMC, Samsung and Intel can compete. Although Samsung announced the mass production of 7nm EUV process as early as October 2018, the actual situation is not the case. Because even Samsung's own Exynos 9820 processor does not use the 7nm EUV process, this is because Samsung's 7nm factory has never been completed in the past. Until recently, the report submitted by Samsung showed that the construction of their $1.3 billion Hwaseong production line has been completed, and Samsung's 7nm EUV process has now truly entered mass production.

According to foreign media reports, Samsung C&T provided information to South Korean securities regulators after the market closed a few days ago, stating that the Samsung Electronics Hwaseong plant on the west coast of South Korea has completed the construction of the production line, with a total planned cost of 1.46 trillion won, or about 1.29 billion U.S. dollars. Samsung C&T's contract of about 1.3 billion U.S. dollars is only part of Samsung's large-scale investment plan in semiconductors in 2017. The total investment plan of 6 trillion won announced that year was mainly for the mass production of the 7-nanometer EUV process in the future, and Samsung has deployed ASML's NXE3400 EUV lithography machine in the S3 Line in Hwaseong, South Korea, but the production line previously produced 10-nanometer process, which was further upgraded this time.

The report also pointed out that Samsung is also building a new production line in Hwaseong, which is specially prepared for the mass production of the 7nm EUV process and is scheduled to be fully completed by the end of 2019. The mass production of the 7nm EUV process is expected to be achieved by the end of 2020. Therefore, combined with Samsung C&T's recent report, this means that the infrastructure construction of Samsung's 7nm EUV process factory has now been completed, and the remaining work will be to install equipment and test the production line.

In fact, unlike its competitor TSMC's strategy at the 7nm node, Samsung directly introduced EUV technology at the initial 7nm LPP process node. Samsung said that after using EUV equipment in the 7nm LPP process, it can reduce 20% of the mask process, making the entire process simpler, saving time and money, and achieving a 40% increase in area energy efficiency, a 20% increase in performance, and a 50% reduction in power consumption.

However, although Samsung's 7nm LPP process production line is almost complete, it still lacks customers for the 7nm process. At present, in addition to Samsung, the main foundry customers known so far are IBM, which is actively looking for a new foundry after GLOBALFOUNDRIES gave up the development of the 7nm process. Samsung and IBM have reached a cooperation agreement in 2018 and will use the 7nm EUV process to manufacture IBM's Power processors in the future.

As for another possible customer, it is NVIDIA. In the past, the two parties have cooperated on the 14nm process node, but currently NVIDIA's main force is still TSMC's 16nm and 12nm processes. On the 7nm chip, although AMD has launched the 7nm process GPU for the first time, NVIDIA does not seem to be in a hurry. Previously, NVIDIA CEO Huang Renxun said that TSMC's 7nm process is public and wants to sell it to NVIDIA, but NVIDIA does not currently rely on a specific process for production. Therefore, whether Samsung can win NVIDIA to adopt 7nm to produce a new generation of products depends on Samsung's future process yield and price.

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