Samsung attracted more than 200 industry experts from fabless companies and foundry partners, and 16 partner booths displayed advanced foundry technology trends, a significant increase in both numbers compared to last year, representing a more solid customer base of Samsung Foundry as well as greater collaboration in Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA).

Since the EMEA semiconductor market is in demand across a wide range of applications including automotive, consumer, network, and internet-of things (IoT), Samsung introduced various specialty technologies, such as FD-SOI, radio frequency (RF), and embedded memory along with comprehensive portfolio of foundry process nodes.

Samsung Electronics showcased its state-of-the-art foundry platforms that bring together essential technical elements for new-age applications, including 5G, IoT, automotive, and high performance computing (HPC), while expanding its design solution partners to improve global customers’ access to Samsung’s foundry solutions.

“It is a great honor to host our global foundry forum with increasing number of attendees every year. The forum has helped us work closely with our customers and strengthen Samsung’s foundry ecosystem,” said Dr. ES Jung, president and head of foundry business at Samsung Electronics, in the keynote speech. “We will strive to get more customer trust and be the best partner possible to prepare for the future with.”

Given the robustness of the European automotive industry, the foundry platform for automotive semiconductor market is drawing considerable attention, and is expected to rapidly grow to address the increasing demand in the autonomous and electric vehicle market.

Samsung is currently producing several automotive semiconductor products such as driving assistant and infotainment systems, mainly based on its 28-nanometer (nm) FD-SOI and 14nm process nodes. In order to respond to increasing customer inquiries, Samsung plans to expand its automotive process nodes to 8nm in near future.

Samsung is also focusing on functional safety and component reliability, which are critically important in the automotive industry, since any failure could cause serious consequences of accident or injury.

Samsung has already proven its ability to design IPs to meet the required automotive standard, and received the ISO 26262 certification for functional safety in automotive components from TÜV Rheinland. Complying with reliability standard AEC-Q100 and IATF 16969 quality management system, it is also preparing for automotive semiconductor production.

Meanwhile, in cooperation with ecosystem partners, Samsung will host its first SAFE (Samsung Advanced Foundry Ecosystem) Forum on Oct 17 in San Jose, to introduce Samsung’s IP, Electronic Design Automation (EDA), and packaging solutions in detail for foundry partners.

As eFlash has faced scalability challenges due to a charge storage-based operation, eMRAM has been the most promising successor since its resistance-based operation allows strong scalability while also possessing outstanding technical characteristics of memory semiconductors such as nonvolatility, random access, and strong endurance. With today’s announcement, Samsung has proved its capability to overcome technical hurdles and demonstrated the possibility for further scalability of embedded memory technology to 28nm process node and beyond.

Samsung’s 28FDS-based eMRAM solution offers unprecedented power and speed advantages with lower cost. Since eMRAM does not require an erase cycle before writing data, its writing speed is approximately a thousand times faster than eFlash. Also, eMRAM uses lower voltages than eFlash, and does not consume electric power when in power-off mode, resulting in great power efficiency.

Furthermore, since an eMRAM module can easily be inserted in the back-end of the process by adding the least number of layers, it has less dependence on the front-end of the process for easy integration with existing logic technologies, such as bulk, fin, and FD-SOI transistor. With this plug-in module concept, customers can enjoy the benefit of reutilizing existing design infrastructure even with this added new technology, eMRAM, and saving costs at the same time.

By combining with 28FD-SOI for better transistor control and minimizing leakage current through body-bias control, Samsung’s eMRAM solution will provide differentiated benefits for a variety of applications including micro controller unit (MCU), internet of things (IoT), and artificial intelligence (AI).

“We are very proud of this achievement in offering right embedded non-volatile memory (eNVM) technology after overcoming complicated challenges of new materials.” said Ryan Lee, vice president of foundry marketing at Samsung Electronics. “By integrating eMRAM with existing proven logic technologies, Samsung Foundry continues to expand its eNVM process portfolio to provide distinct competitive advantages and excellent manufacturability to meet customers and market requirement.”

A ceremony to celebrate this first shipment of eMRAM product will be held on March 6 at Samsung’s Giheung campus, Korea. Samsung plans to expand its options for high-density eNVM solutions, including a tape-out of 1Gb eMRAM test chip within this year.

Kinam Kim, President of Samsung Electronics’ Semiconductor Business, introduces the company’s newest foundry process technologies and solutions.

“The ubiquitous nature of smart, connected machines and everyday consumer devices signals the beginning of the next industrial revolution,” said Jong Shik Yoon, Executive Vice President of the Foundry Business at Samsung Electronics. “To successfully compete in today’s fast-paced business environment, our customers need a foundry partner with a comprehensive roadmap at the advanced process nodes to achieve their business goals and objectives.”

The Samsung Foundry Forum showcased a number of new technologies that will enable the development of new devices that will connect consumers in entirely new ways. Pictured from left are: Jong Shik Yoon, Executive Vice President of Foundry Business; Young Chang Bae, Executive Vice President of Foundry Business; ES Jung, Executive Vice President of Foundry Business; and Kinam Kim, President of Semiconductor Business.

Samsung’s newest foundry process technologies and solutions introduced at the annual Samsung Foundry Forum include:

• 8LPP (8nm Low Power Plus): 8LPP provides the most competitive scaling benefit before transitioning to EUV (Extreme Ultra Violet) lithography. Combining key process innovations from Samsung’s 10nm technology, 8LPP offers additional benefits in the areas of performance and gate density as compared to 10LPP.

• 7LPP (7nm Low Power Plus): 7LPP will be the first semiconductor process technology to use an EUV lithography solution. 250W of maximum EUV source power, which is the most important milestone for EUV insertion into high volume production, was developed by the collaborative efforts of Samsung and ASML. EUV lithography deployment will break the barriers of Moore’s law scaling, paving the way for single nanometer semiconductor technology generations.

• 6LPP (6nm Low Power Plus): 6LPP will adopt Samsung’s unique Smart Scaling solutions, which will be incorporated on top of the EUV-based 7LPP technology, allowing for greater area scaling and ultra-low power benefits.

• 5LPP (5nm Low Power Plus): 5LPP extends the physical scaling limit of FinFET structure by implementing technology innovations from the next process generation, 4LPP, for better scaling and power reduction.

• 4LPP (4nm Low Power Plus): 4LPP will be the first implementation of next generation device architecture – MBCFET^TM structure (Multi Bridge Channel FET). MBCFET^TM is Samsung’s unique GAAFET (Gate All Around FET) technology that uses a Nanosheet device to overcome the physical scaling and performance limitations of the FinFET architecture.

• FD-SOI (Fully Depleted – Silicon on Insulator): Well suited for IoT applications, Samsung will gradually expand its 28FDS technology into a broader platform offering by incorporating RF (Radio Frequency) and eMRAM(embedded Magnetic Random Access Memory) options. 18FDS is the next generation node on Samsung’s FD-SOI roadmap with enhanced PPA (Power/Performance/Area).

EVP Yoon concluded that “Samsung Foundry’s advanced process technology roadmap is a testament to the collaborative nature of our customer and ecosystem partner relationships. The inclusion of the process technologies above will enable an explosion of new devices that will connect consumers in ways never seen before.”