Samsung Foundry suddenly changed the name of its SF3 (3nm) manufacturing node to… SF2 – Samsung

As hopeless as it may seem, the Korean company has decided to rename the SF3 technology to SF2 (which was supposed to be the specific manufacturing method of the 2nm class) in an attempt to stave off the huge rise of Intel Foundry Services and better compete with it. , at least in “marketing terms” in the first place.

In fact, as ZDNet points out, the renaming of the manufacturing center from SF3 to SF2 is nothing more than a marketing move by Samsung Foundry as one of its main competitors, Intel Foundry Services, is expected to put the manufacturing center up and running later this year. . Intel 20A, a 2nm technology. According to the report, Samsung has already notified its customers of the relevant changes to its “roadmap” and plans, and according to reports, it has gone so far as to sign new contracts with customers who have already agreed to use the SF3 node technology.

“Samsung Electronics has informed us that the second generation 3nm manufacturing node has changed to 2nm (in name),” a representative of one of the partner companies told ZDNet, adding: “We have appointed Samsung Foundry for the second generation node.” 3nm product line, but we recently revised the contract to change the nomenclature to 2nm. Despite the big name change, Samsung's SF3 technology, now SF2, has not undergone any real change at the technology level. This basically shows that it is just a marketing move and nothing more. If the manufacturing method changes, the company's customers will have to fundamentally change the design of their chips as well. It should be noted that the SF2 technology, which uses gate-type all-round (GAA) transistors, which Samsung Electronics calls multi-bridge channel effect transistors (MBCFET), does not have a “back-end power delivery network” (BSPDN), an innovation introduced by Intel relatively recently introduced a key feature of its manufacturing method, the Intel 20A. Samsung Foundry has not yet confirmed the name change.