- It has been reported that Samsung is in a test production phase for 3 nm foundry processing that could be used to extract bitcoins.
- The first customer will be PanSemi, a Chinese manufacturer of ASICs and Qualcomm may also be involved in the future.
- 3 nm smelting processing can allow chips to have reduced power consumption, increased speed, and higher amounts of transistors.
It has been reported that Samsung will begin test production this week of three nanometer (3nm) chips for application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), the most efficient machines for extracting bitcoins.
Samsung’s first customer, according to the report, is a Chinese ASIC company known as PanSemi, which designs ASICs used for bitcoin mining. Similarly, Qualcomm, Samsung’s largest customer, has also made reservations to take advantage of the new manufacturing process with sources saying Qualcomm can participate at any time, but is not committed.
Previously, Qualcomm had placed orders for 4nm chips, but they were canceled last February due to a surprising lack of production from Samsung. This caused Qualcomm to be picked up by another company: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC).
Samsung’s latest offering is called gate-all-around (GAA) which, as its name suggests, will have doors on all four surfaces. So far, the most commercially successful process is FinFET, which has only used three surfaces instead of four. This upgrade supposedly allows the doors to be narrower and allows for more precise control of the currents. Reports suggest that this could lead to a 45% reduction in area and a 30% increase in efficiency if test production is successful.
In addition, Tech Monitor reported that TSMC’s 3 nm process would reduce the size of the semiconductor which, in turn, would reduce power consumption by up to 30%, increase speed by up to 15%, while would allow 33% more transistor density, making the hardware more powerful.
Although this report was from last year, it is still valuable to understand the potential impacts this advancement will have on technology.