The plan represents an increase of KRW 38 trillion from the previous commitment of KRW 133 trillion announced in April 2019 and is expected to help the Company reach its goal of becoming the world leader in logic chips by 2030. For the past two years, Samsung has been closely collaborating with various semiconductor design companies, component and equipment manufacturers, as well as academia in making progress towards that goal.

The expansion of the Company’s Foundry Business will help fuel entire new industries built on next-generation technologies like AI, 5G and autonomous driving.

The Company also announced that it has begun construction of a new production line in Pyeongtaek, Korea, which is expected to be completed in the second half of 2022. The state-of-the-art facility equipped with the latest technology, P3, will produce 14-nanometer DRAM and 5-nanometer logic semiconductors, both based on extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography technology.

“The entire semiconductor industry is facing a watershed moment and now is the time to chart out a plan for long-term strategy and investment,” said Dr. Kinam Kim, Vice Chairman and Head of Device Solutions Division at Samsung Electronics. “For the memory business, where Samsung has maintained its undisputed leadership position, the Company will continue to make preemptive investments to lead the industry.”

As one of the world’s largest semiconductor clusters, Pyeongtaek will serve as the leading hub for next-generation innovations.

Samsung Electronics, a world leader in advanced semiconductor technology, today announced that its new cutting-edge semiconductor fabrication line in Hwaseong, Korea, has begun mass production.

The facility, V1, is Samsung’s first semiconductor production line dedicated to the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography technology and produces chips using process node of 7 nanometer (nm) and below. The V1 line broke ground in February 2018, and began test wafer production in the second half of 2019. Its first products will be delivered to customers in the first quarter.

“Along with technology leadership and design infrastructure, manufacturing excellence is one of the most important elements of the foundry business,” said Dr. ES Jung, President and Head of Foundry Business at Samsung Electronics. “As we ramp up production, the V1 line will enhance our ability to respond to market demand and expand opportunities to support our customers.”

The V1 line is currently producing state-of-the-art mobile chips with 7 and 6nm process technology and will continue to adopt finer circuitry up to the 3nm process node.

By the end of 2020, the cumulative total investment in the V1 line will reach USD 6 billion in accordance with Samsung’s plan and the total capacity from 7nm and below process node is expected to triple from that of 2019. Together with the S3 line, the V1 line is expected to play a pivotal role in responding to fast-growing global market demand for single-digit node foundry technologies.

As semiconductor geometries grow smaller, the adoption of EUV lithography technology has become increasingly important, as it enables scaling down of complex patterns on wafers and provides an optimal choice for next-generation applications such as 5G, AI, and Automotive.

With the V1 line in operation, Samsung now has a total of six foundry production lines in South Korea and the United States, including five 12-inch lines and one 8-inch line. (see below)

* Global manufacturing sites of Samsung foundry

Compared to 7nm, Samsung’s 5nm FinFET process technology provides up to a 25 percent increase in logic area efficiency with 20 percent lower power consumption or 10 percent higher performance as a result of process improvement to enable us to have more innovative standard cell architecture.

In addition to power performance area (PPA) improvements from 7nm to 5nm, customers can fully leverage Samsung’s highly sophisticated EUV technology. Like its predecessor, 5nm uses EUV lithography in metal layer patterning and reduces mask layers while providing better fidelity.

Another key benefit of 5nm is that we can reuse all the 7nm intellectual property (IP) to 5nm. Thereby 7nm customers’ transitioning to 5nm will greatly benefit from reduced migration costs, pre-verified design ecosystem, and consequently shorten their 5nm product development.

As a result of the close collaboration between Samsung Foundry and its ‘Samsung Advanced Foundry Ecosystem (SAFE)’ partners, a robust design infrastructure for Samsung’s 5nm, including the process design kit (PDK), design methodologies (DM), electronic design automation (EDA) tools, and IP, has been provided since the fourth quarter of 2018. Besides, Samsung Foundry has already started offering 5nm Multi Project Wafer (MPW) service to customers.

“In successful completion of our 5nm development, we’ve proven our capabilities in EUV-based nodes,” said Charlie Bae, Executive Vice President of Foundry Business at Samsung Electronics. “In response to customers’ surging demand for advanced process technologies to differentiate their next-generation products, we continue our commitment to accelerating the volume production of EUV-based technologies.”

In October 2018, Samsung announced the readiness and its initial production of 7nm process, its first process node with EUV lithography technology. The company has provided commercial samples of the industry’s first EUV-based new products and has started mass production of 7nm process early this year.

Also, Samsung is collaborating with customers on 6nm, a customized EUV-based process node, and has already received the product tape-out of its first 6nm chip.

Mr. Bae continued, “Considering the various benefits including PPA and IP, Samsung’s EUV-based advanced nodes are expected to be in high demand for new and innovative applications such as 5G, artificial intelligence (AI), high performance computing (HPC), and automotive. Leveraging our robust technology competitiveness including our leadership in EUV lithography, Samsung will continue to deliver the most advanced technologies and solutions to customers.”

Samsung foundry’s EUV-based process technologies are currently being manufactured at the S3-line in Hwaseong, Korea. Additionally, Samsung will expand its EUV capacity to a new EUV line in Hwaseong, which is expected to be completed within the second half of 2019 and start production ramp-up from next year.

Here, we explore exactly what EUV is and why it is so integral to developing next-generation chips.

What is EUV?

In the semiconductor industry, EUV refers to extreme ultraviolet lithography, a technology that is expected to bring a radical progress to one of the most important steps in semiconductor manufacturing, photolithography.

When producing semiconductor chips, silicon-based round disks, called “wafers” are coated with a light-sensitive substance and enter a system called a “scanner.” Inside the scanner, a laser light source is cast onto the wafers to create patterns of circuitries, which later are used for forming billions of ultrafine, microscopically small structures, inside a semiconductor chip. This process, while described very concisely, is known as photolithography.

Photo of a tall, box-shaped EUV scanner (courtesy of ASML)

With EUV technology, an EUV system, or EUV scanner, will now be able to perform the photolithography step by utilizing a light source with an “extreme ultraviolet” wavelength. In the world of chip manufacturing, realizing finer circuits is a must, as it enables integration of a greater number of components inside a chip and therefore building faster and more energy efficient chip.

The utilization of an EUV light source will allow for defining finer and denser patterns than previous methods because of its shorter wavelength, which is essential since light isn’t able to directly define features smaller than its own wavelength. Upcoming EUV scanners will, specifically, utilize EUV radiation at a 13.5-nanometer wavelength, less than 1/10th of what current ArF excimer laser scanners are able to provide.

How will EUV be implemented?

Today, semiconductor chips are being used in almost every electronic device imaginable, and EUV technology will be utilized to produce the most advanced semiconductors for mobile, server, network and supercomputing applications.

For its part, Samsung plans to utilize EUV starting with its 7-nanometer LPP (Low Power Plus) process, a cutting-edge technology that the company expects to apply by the second half of 2018. Samsung’s new fabrication line in Hwaseong, which will be ready for production in 2020, will also be set up with EUV technology to provide leading-edge semiconductor products to global market.

Through further scaling from the earlier 14LPP process, 11LPP delivers up to 15 percent higher performance and up to 10 percent chip area reduction with the same power consumption.

In addition to the 10nm FinFET process for mobile processors in premium flagship smartphones, the company expects its 11nm process to bring differentiated value to mid- to high-end smartphones.

The new process technology is scheduled to be ready for production in the first half of 2018.

Samsung also confirmed that development of 7LPP with EUV (extreme ultra violet) lithography technology is on schedule, targeting its initial production in the second half of 2018.

Since 2014, Samsung has processed close to 200,000 wafers with EUV lithography technology and, building on its experience, has recently seen visible results in process development such as achieving  80 percent yield for 256 megabit (Mb) SRAM (static random-access memory).

“Samsung has added the 11nm process to our roadmap to offer advanced options for various applications,” said Ryan Lee, Vice President and Head of Foundry Marketing at Samsung Electronics. “Through this, Samsung has completed a comprehensive process roadmap spanning from 14nm to 11nm, 10nm, 8nm, and 7nm in the next three years.”

Details of the recent update to Samsung’s foundry roadmap, including 11LPP availability and 7nm EUV development, will be elaborated at the Samsung Foundry Forum Japan on September 15, 2017, in Tokyo. The Samsung Foundry Forum was held in the United States and South Korea earlier this year, sharing Samsung’s cutting-edge process technologies with global customers and partners.