Samsung Electronics, a world leader in advanced semiconductor technology, today hosted Samsung Foundry Forum (SFF) 2023 Europe and unveiled its advanced and wide ranging automotive process solutions, from the most advanced 2-nanometer process to the 8-inch legacy process.

Alongside its customers and Samsung Advanced Foundry Ecosystem (SAFE) partners, Samsung Electronics showcased the latest technological trends and its business strategy tailored to the European market.

“Samsung Foundry is driving innovation in next-generation solutions to build an expanded portfolio that meets the growing needs of our automotive customers, especially as the era of electric vehicles becomes a reality,” said Dr. Siyoung Choi, President and Head of Foundry Business at Samsung Electronics. “We are strengthening our readiness to provide customers with distinguished service across a variety of solutions, including power semiconductors, microcontrollers and advanced AI chips for autonomous driving.”

Since participating in IAA Mobility 2023 for the first time in September, Samsung Electronics is strengthening engagement and partnership in specialty processes for automotive customers in the European market, further solidifying its status as a leading foundry partner for the industry.

Pioneering New Applications With Industry’s Most Advanced eMRAM

In order to meet the needs of the latest advancements in the automotive market, Samsung is setting out to develop the industry’s first 5-nanometer eMRAM for next-generation automotive technology. eMRAM is a next-generation memory semiconductor used for automotive applications that enables high read and write speeds as well as superior heat resistance.

Since developing and mass producing the industry’s first 28nm FD-SOI¹ based eMRAM in 2019, Samsung Electronics has been developing 14nm for the FinFET process based on AEC-Q100 Grade 1. Samsung Foundry plans to expand its eMRAM portfolio by adding 14nm by 2024, 8nm by 2026, and 5nm by 2027.

Samsung’s 8nm eMRAM shows potential to deliver a 30% increase in density and 33% increase in speed, compared to the 14nm process.

Tackling the Market With Automotive Process Solutions From Cutting-Edge to Legacy

The company announced its advanced process roadmap, highlighting its plans to complete mass production readiness for its 2nm process for automotive applications by 2026.

Samsung Electronics is also bolstering its readiness to serve customer needs by expanding its 8-inch BCD (Bipolar-CMOS-DMOS) process portfolio. The BCD process combines the strengths of three different process technologies: Bipolar (B), CMOS (C), and DMOS (D) on one chip and is most commonly used in the production of power semiconductors.

Samsung Electronics plans to expand its current 130nm automotive BCD process to add 90nm by 2025. The 90nm BCD process is expected to bring a 20% decrease in chip area compared to the 130nm process.

Implementing Deep Trench Isolation (DTI) technology, which reduces the distance between each transistor to maximize the performance of power semiconductors, Samsung Foundry will be able to apply a greater voltage of 120V instead of 70V to a wider range of applications. This will enable readiness to provide a process development kit (PDK) that implements 120V to the 130nm BCD process by 2025.

Leading ‘Beyond-Moore’ Innovation Through Advanced Packaging Alliance

Samsung established a Multi-Die Integration (MDI) Alliance by collaborating with its SAFE partners as well as major players in memory, package substrate, and testing.

As part of an industry-wide partnership with 20 partners, Samsung is leading the development of 2.5D and 3D packaging solutions customized for all applications from automotive to high-performance computing (HPC).

Samsung Electronics hosted the annual Samsung Foundry Forum 2023 in the United States on June 27-28, in South Korea on July 4, and in Japan on October 17. The content from the forum will be available on the Samsung Semiconductor website for worldwide access to all visitors beginning November 2.

¹ Fully Depleted Silicon On Insulator (FD-SOI) is a planar process technology that implements an impervious insulating film (SiO2) on top of a silicon wafer and builds transistors on top of it to minimize leakage.

Samsung Electronics, a world leader in advanced semiconductor technology, today announced its latest foundry technology innovations and business strategy at the 7^th annual Samsung Foundry Forum (SFF) 2023.

Under the theme “Innovation Beyond Boundaries,” this year’s forum delved into Samsung Foundry’s mission to address customer needs in the artificial intelligence (AI) era through advanced semiconductor technology.

Over 700 guests, from customers and partners of Samsung Foundry, attended this year’s event, of which 38 companies hosted their own booths to share the latest technology trends in the foundry industry.

“Samsung Foundry has always met customer needs by being ahead of the technology innovation curve, and today, we are confident that our gate-all-around (GAA)-based advanced node technology will be instrumental in supporting the needs of our customers using AI applications,” said Dr. Siyoung Choi, President and Head of Foundry Business at Samsung Electronics. “Ensuring the success of our customers is the most central value to our foundry services.”

As part of its business strategy to solidify its competitiveness as a leading foundry service, Samsung Foundry today announced the following:

• Expanded applications of its 2-nanometer (nm) process and specialty process
• Expanded production capacity at its Pyeongtaek fab Line 3 (P3)
• Launched a new “Multi-Die Integration (MDI) Alliance” for next-generation packaging technology
• Continued progress in the foundry ecosystem with Samsung Advanced Foundry Ecosystem (SAFE) partners

Leading the Industry With Expanded 2nm Applications and Specialty Processes

At the event, Samsung announced detailed plans for the mass production of its 2nm process, as well as performance levels.

The company will begin mass production of the 2nm process for mobile applications in 2025, then expand to HPC in 2026 and automotive in 2027. Samsung’s 2nm process (SF2) has shown a 12% increase in performance, a 25% increase in power efficiency and a 5% decrease in area, when compared to its 3nm process (SF3).

Mass production of SF1.4 will begin in 2027 as planned.

From 2025, Samsung will begin foundry services for 8-inch gallium nitride (GaN) power semiconductors targeting consumer, data center and automotive applications.

To secure the most cutting-edge technology in 6G, the 5nm Radio Frequency (RF) is also under development and will be available in the first half of 2025. Samsung’s 5nm RF process shows a 40% increase in power efficiency and a 50% decrease in area compared to the previous 14nm process.

In addition, the company will add automotive applications to its 8nm and 14nm RF, expanding beyond the mobile applications currently under mass production.

Stabilizing the Supply Chain and Meeting Customer Needs With Expanded Capacity

Under the “Shell-First” operation strategy that aims to better respond to customer demands, Samsung Foundry is maintaining its commitment to invest and build capacity by adding new manufacturing lines in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, and Taylor, Texas. Current expansion plans will increase the company’s clean room capacity by 7.3 times by 2027 compared to 2021.

The company plans to begin mass production of foundry products for mobile and other applications at Pyeongtaek Line 3 in the second half of the year. Samsung is also focusing on increasing its manufacturing capacity in the United States. Construction of the new fab in Taylor is proceeding according to initial plans and is expected to finish by the end of the year, beginning operation in the second half of 2024.

Samsung will continue to expand its production base to Yongin, South Korea, to power the next generation of Samsung’s foundry services. Yongin is a nearby city located about 10km east of Samsung’s Hwaseong and Giheung campuses.

Leading the “Beyond Moore” Era With New Multi-Die Integration Alliance

In a bid to address the rapid growth in the chiplet market for mobile and HPC applications, Samsung is launching the MDI Alliance in collaboration with its partner companies as well as major players in memory, substrate packaging and testing.

The MDI Alliance leads innovation in stacking technology by forming a packaging technology ecosystem for 2.5D and 3D Heterogeneous Integration. Together with partners across the ecosystem, Samsung will provide a one-stop turnkey service to better support customers’ technological innovation.

Samsung plans to actively respond to customer and market needs by developing customized packaging solutions that are tailored to the individual needs of various applications including HPC and automotive.

Pushing Boundaries With Partners for Enhanced Fabless Support

Following the Samsung Foundry Forum, Samsung will be hosting the Samsung Advanced Foundry Ecosystem (SAFE) Forum on June 28 under the theme “Accelerating the Speed of Innovation.”

Together with over a hundred partners across electronic design automation (EDA), design solution partners (DSP), outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT), cloud and IP, Samsung is promoting mutual growth of the foundry ecosystem to power the success of customers.

Samsung has long supported stronger collaboration between partners across the foundry ecosystem, advancing the boundaries of design infrastructure from 8-inch to the latest GAA process. Samsung and its 23 EDA partners now offer over 80 design tools and is also collaborating with 10 OSAT partners to develop 2.5D/3D packaging design solutions.

Samsung provides product design services to a variety of customers from startups to industry leaders through strong partnerships with nine DSP partners that have extensive expertise in Samsung Foundry processes, as well as nine Cloud partners.

Samsung has also secured a portfolio of over 4,500 key IPs from 50 global IP partners. Samsung plans to secure additional next-generation high-speed interface IPs for SF2, including LPDDR5x, HBM3P, PCIe Gen6 and 112G SerDes. Its long-term partnerships with leading global IP providers in their respective fields will help cater to customer needs in AI, HPC and automotive.

“Through extensive collaboration with our SAFE partners, Samsung Foundry is helping simplify designs that are becoming even more complex amid the application of the most advanced processes and new technologies such as heterogeneous integration,” said Jong-wook Kye, Executive Vice President and Head of Design Platform Development, Foundry Business at Samsung Electronics. “We will continue to strive for consistent growth in the Samsung Foundry ecosystem in terms of both scale and quality.”

Samsung Electronics will be hosting the Samsung Foundry Forum 2023 in South Korea in July, and the event will expand to Europe and Asia later in the year to meet customers in each region.

▲ Integrated Ambarella CV3-AD685 system-on-chip built on Samsung Foundry’s 5nm technology

Samsung Electronics, a world leader in advanced semiconductor technology, and Ambarella, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMBA), an edge AI semiconductor company, today announced that Samsung’s Foundry business is providing its 5-nanometer (nm) process technology to Ambarella for its newly announced CV3-AD685 automotive AI central domain controller. This collaboration will help transform the next generation of autonomous driving vehicle safety systems by bringing new levels of AI processing performance, power and reliability.

The CV3-AD685 is the first production version of Ambarella’s CV3-AD family of automotive AI central domain controllers with Tier-1 automotive suppliers announcing they will offer solutions using the CV3-AD system-on-chip (SoC) product family. Samsung’s 5nm process technology is optimized for automotive-grade semiconductors with extremely tight process controls and advanced IP for exceptional reliability and outstanding traceability.

Ambarella will rely on Samsung’s 5nm process maturity and the technology’s solid track record. This 5nm process is backed by the company’s extensive experience in automotive foundry process, IP and service package development to enable manufacturers to create cutting-edge innovations in assisted and automated mobility.

“Ambarella and Samsung Foundry have a rich history of collaboration, and we are excited to bring their world-class 5nm technology to our new CV3-AD685 SoCs,” said Fermi Wang, President and CEO at Ambarella. “Samsung’s proven automotive process technology allows us to bring new levels of AI acceleration, systems integration and power efficiency to ADAS and L2+ through L4 autonomous vehicles.”

The CV3-AD685 integrates Ambarella’s next-generation CVflow^® AI engine, which includes neural network processing that is 20 times faster than the previous generation of Ambarella’s CV2 SoCs. It also provides general-vector and neural-vector processing capabilities to deliver the overall performance required for full autonomous driving (AD) stack processing, including computer vision, 4D imaging radar, deep sensor fusion and path planning.

“Samsung brings 5nm EUV FinFET technology to automotive applications for unprecedented ADAS and vision processor performance,” said Sang-Pil Sim, Executive Vice President and Head of Foundry Corporate Planning at Samsung Electronics. “With Tier-1 automotive suppliers already adopting the technology, we believe other automotive companies will also consider using the Ambarella CV3-AD SoC product family manufactured in Samsung’s 5nm process.”

The CV3-AD685 will be the first in the CV3-AD product family to use Samsung’s 5nm process, and this SoC integrates advanced image processing, a dense stereo and optical flow engine, ARM^® Cortex^® A78AE and R52 CPUs, an automotive GPU for visualizations, and a hardware security module (HSM). It features an “algorithm first” architecture that provides support for the entire autonomous-driving software stack.

The high-performance, power efficient and scalable CV3-AD family, which is built specifically for ADAS, complements a wide range of solutions for assisted driving while advancing vehicle automation. The integrated CV3-AD685 SoC enables information from various sensors to be fused for robust L2+ to L4 autonomous driving. Samsung Foundry’s industry-leading process technology and advanced 3D-packaging solutions are powering many of the latest mobile, HPC and automotive solutions.

Samsung’s 5nm process is also backed by the Samsung Advanced Foundry Ecosystem (SAFE) program. The SAFE program ensures close collaboration between Samsung Foundry, ecosystem partners and customers to deliver robust SoC designs based on certified key design components including Process Design Kits (PDK), reference flows with Design Methodologies (DM), a variety of Intellectual Properties (IP), and on-demand design support.

About Ambarella

Ambarella’s products are used in a wide variety of human vision and edge AI applications, including video security, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), electronic mirror, drive recorder, driver/cabin monitoring, autonomous driving and robotics applications. Ambarella’s low-power systems-on-chip (SoCs) offer high-resolution video compression, advanced image and radar processing and powerful deep neural network processing to enable intelligent perception, fusion and planning. For more information, please visit www.ambarella.com.

Samsung Electronics, a world leader in advanced semiconductor technology, today announced the launch of ‘Samsung Advanced Foundry Ecosystem (SAFE) Cloud Design Platform (CDP)’ for fabless customers, in collaboration with Rescale, a leader in high performance computing (HPC) applications in the cloud.

The key highlight feature of Samsung foundry’s first SAFE Cloud Design Platform is that it provides a virtual environment to design chips in the cloud. By accessing this platform through the cloud, customers can immediately start designing at anytime and anywhere.

To maximize customers’ design convenience, SAFE CDP supports a very secure design condition that has verified with cloud companies. In addition, customers can utilize various Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools offered by multiple vendors such as Ansys, Cadence, Mentor, a Siemens business and Synopsys.

Gaonchips, one of Samsung Foundry’s Design Solution Partners, has already tested the SAFE CDP on its 14nm automotive project using Cadence’s Innovus Implementation System and has successfully reduced its design run-time by 30 percent compared to current on-premise execution.

“We expect that our innovative design platform co-developed in partnership with Rescale will play a crucial role for the fabless industry as it evolves into efficient cloud-based design environment,” said Jae-hong Park, executive vice president of Foundry Design Platform Development at Samsung Electronics. “We remain committed to our efforts to bolster the SAFE ecosystem and will continue to collaborate with our SAFE partners on developing innovative programs that will help deliver ease of use and greater design efficiency for customers.”

As designs move to advanced nodes and as transistor scaling occurs at each node, chip designs become more complex and computing power required for these designs have increased significantly, resulting in greater overhead time and cost to customers.

By adopting CDP, customers can reduce the burden of building their own server infrastructure, while flexibly utilizing additional computing power required for chip design and verification. Furthermore, they can take full advantage of Samsung’s diverse foundry ecosystem which includes EDA, intellectual property (IP), cloud, and design services offered by reputable partners.

“We are excited to be a partner of Samsung Foundry SAFE ecosystem,” said Joris Poort, founder and CEO of Rescale. “We share a common vision of a global design cloud platform that efficiently supports a broad ecosystem of technologies and services for EDA customers worldwide.”

To actively respond to the latest technology trends and lower the design barrier for developing competitive SoCs, Samsung launched the SAFE program in early 2018 and held the first SAFE Forum in the United States last year. More information on SAFE can be found here.

About Rescale
Rescale is the leader in enterprise big compute in the cloud. Rescale’s ScaleX^® multi-cloud platform, built on the most powerful high-performance computing infrastructure, seamlessly matches software applications with the best architecture in the cloud to run complex data processing and simulations. Rescale partners with the largest cloud service providers such as Amazon Web Service, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, IBM, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, providing services enterprise in automotive, aerospace, defense, and semiconductor industry. For more information on Rescale, visit www.rescale.com.

Currently, customers are working closely with Samsung to utilize the company’s cutting-edge 8-inch technology offerings in various applications. All 8-inch offerings, ranging from 180nm to 65nm, are processed at Line 6, a highly automated facility in Giheung, Korea.

“Customers’ interests are very high given the industry’s needs for alternative 8-inch solutions.” said Ryan Lee, Vice President of Foundry Marketing at Samsung Electronics. “By expanding our technology offerings into the RF/IoT and fingerprint segments, we will enable our customers to take advantage of Samsung’s state-of-the-art 8-inch solutions in a broader range of applications”.

Samsung’s 8-inch process technology offerings now include the following solutions;

• eFlash : 130nm, 65nm
• Power: 130nm, 90nm (BCD+eFlash)
• Display Driver IC : 180nm, 130nm, 90nm, 70nm
• CMOS Image Sensor: 90nm
• RF/IoT : 90nm (Ultra low leakage device)
• Fingerprint Sensor: 180nm

The 8-inch foundry market has been one of the focal points since Samsung Foundry became a separate business last May. In this regard, Samsung has firmly established customer centric 8-inch service capabilities with great multi project wafer (MPW) programs as well as intellectual property (IP), and launched the Samsung Advanced Foundry Ecosystem (SAFE^TM) program this year.

For more information about Samsung Foundry, please visit https://www.samsungfoundry.com

Samsung Electronics, a world leader in advanced semiconductor technology, has announced today its continued commitment to first-pass silicon success for its foundry customers’ chip designs by launching the Samsung Advanced Foundry Ecosystem (SAFE^TM) program.

The SAFE^TM program ensures deep collaboration between the Samsung Foundry, ecosystem partners, and customers to deliver competitive and robust System on Chip (SoC) designs based on certified key design components including Process Design Kit (PDK), reference flows with Design Methodologies(DM), Intellectual Property (IP), and ASIC design support.

“We are very excited to provide the comprehensive, collaborative, and qualified Samsung Advanced Foundry Ecosystem to our customers to enable faster and more reliable SoC design success”, said Jong Shik Yoon, executive vice president of Foundry Technology Development at Samsung Electronics. “Together with our SAFE^TM partners, Samsung Foundry will provide certified design enablement solutions to existing strategic customers as well as innovative, new start-up customers. We welcome all current and future Ecosystem partners to join the new SAFE^TM program.”

The SAFE^TM program is based on three pillars :

• EDA/DM : Provides extensively tested PDKs and reference flows (with design methodologies) that are backed by Samsung Foundry’s certification.
• IP : Provides a full set of silicon qualified, application specific IP offerings from the early stage of process technology development. Customers can view a full list of IP solutions offered through SAFE^TM by accessing Samsung Foundry’s B2B site, CONNECT(https://www.samsungfoundry.com).
• Design Services : Connects mid- to small-sized companies with qualified ASIC design services and support. Using design service partners of SAFE^TM, customers will benefit from easy access to process technology information, competitive price conditions, and committed resources for their SoC design success.

For more information about Samsung Foundry, please visit https://www.samsungfoundry.com

Quotes from SAFE^TM  Partner Companies

• Arm, Gus Yeung, vice president and general manager of Physical Design Group

“The Samsung Advanced Foundry Ecosystem creates significant opportunities for the industry. Through our ongoing collaboration with the Samsung Foundry, we are enabling the ecosystem with access to leadership co-optimized physical IP solutions for enhancing next-generation SoC designs.”

• AlphaHoldings, Donggi Kim, CEO

“It’s honor to be one of the initial member of SAFE. As a Korean design service partner, we are ready to support Samsung Foundry’s ASIC customers more effective way based on long-term collaboration with Samsung Foundry and competencies – leading edge process experiences, customer specific IP, high quality manpower, error free design capabilities, etc.”

• Cadence, KT Moore, vice president, product management

“We’ve collaborated with Samsung Foundry for many years to enable our joint customers to achieve their aggressive design goals. We believe that the new SAFE foundry design program will facilitate innovation and help customers deliver designs to market even faster. Our support for Samsung Foundry’s process technologies continues to expand with our broadened IP portfolio and full EDA tool enablement with comprehensive reference flows.”

• eSilicon, Hugh Durdan, vice president, strategy and products

“Through our Tier 1 ASIC work with Samsung Foundry, we understand Samsung Foundry’s advanced process technologies well. This allows us to offer differentiating IP targeted at the high-bandwidth networking, high-performance computing, artificial intelligence (AI) and 5G infrastructure markets using these advanced process technologies.”

• Faraday, Steve Wang, President

“Samsung Foundry provides the most competitive grand ecosystem for the leading edge technologies. Since our establishment in 1993, Faraday has successfully delivered more than 2,200 ASIC mass production projects. Thus we are confident in our ability to leverage the SAFE program, targeting next-generation applications now and beyond.”

• Mentor, Joe Sawicki, vice president, Design to Silicon

“Mentor is proud that it has been the signoff solution for Samsung’s own design efforts over the last two decades and Samsung Foundry since the foundry was launched in 2005. We are pleased to be continuing our close partnership with Samsung as it expands its ecosystem interactions via the Samsung SAFE initiative.”

• Rambus, Luc Seraphin, senior vice president and general manager, Memory and Interfaces Division

“As ASIC and SoC designs continue to increase in complexity, high-speed interfaces are integral to successful design. This strong partnership between Rambus and Samsung across multiple nodes, ensures that we are providing a broad portfolio of high-quality solutions to our end customers. We are pleased to collaborate with Samsung Foundry to provide designers with leading high-speed SerDes and memory PHY IP solutions for easy integration into their chip designs.”

• Synopsys, Deirdre Hanford, co-general manager, Design Group

“Our collaboration with Samsung Foundry since 2005 has enabled mutual customers to deliver state-of-the-art designs across a wide range of Samsung’s process technologies. The SAFE program will help accelerate adoption of Synopsys’ high-quality IP, market-leading tools, and comprehensive design services supporting Samsung Foundry for development of their differentiated SoCs.”

• VeriSilicon, Wayne Dai, President and CEO

“Our experience in shipping high volume SoCs using Samsung 14nm and 10nm FinFET, as well as 28nm FD-SOI process demonstrates that Samsung Foundry has excellent potential for the China market. Now as a charter member of SAFE, we will expand our partnership to a new level enabling us to better support our mutual customers.”

The article raised questions as to the effect of this on the recently launched Samsung Pay service. The first thing to know is that Samsung Pay was not impacted and at no point was any personal payment information at risk. This was an isolated incident that targeted the LoopPay office network, which is a physically separate network from Samsung Pay. The LoopPay incident was resolved and had nothing to do with Samsung Pay.

It’s worth reiterating that the reported incident was related to LoopPay’s office network which handles email, file servers and printing within the company. This network is physically separate from the production network that handles payment transactions and run by Samsung.

The incident involved three servers on LoopPay’s internal office network.

As soon as the incident was discovered, LoopPay followed their standard incident response procedures and acted immediately and comprehensively. LoopPay brought in two independent professional security teams. LoopPay immediately identified and quarantined the targeted devices, conducted a thorough and extensive sweep of LoopPay’s entire system, and put additional safeguards in place.

Again, Samsung, Samsung Pay, and Samsung users were not affected.

We’re confident that Samsung Pay is safe and secure. Each transaction uses a digital token to replace a card number. The encrypted token combined with certificate information can only be used once to make a payment. Merchants and retailers can’t see or store the actual card data.

Security is a number one priority at Samsung —and always will be. Samsung is committed to securing and protecting user data to the highest industry standards.

Samsung Pay is off to an amazing start. Our beta test and our launch showed that customers have been overwhelmingly satisfied with their experience. We’re proud to offer the only mobile payment option that works almost anywhere you can swipe or tap a card today.