[News] South Korean Media Suggests AMD Could Become Samsung’s 3nm GAA Process Customer

According to a report on May 29th from The Korea Economic Daily, it has speculated that AMD is likely to become a customer of Samsung Electronics’ 3nm GAA process. Reportedly, during AMD CEO Lisa Su’s appearance at the 2024 ITF World, which was hosted by the Belgian microelectronics research center imec, Lisa Su revealed that AMD plans to use the 3nm GAA process for mass-producing next-generation chips.

As per the same report, Lisa Su stated that 3nm GAA transistors can enhance efficiency and performance, with improvements in packaging and interconnect technology. This will make AMD products more cost-effective and power-efficient. The report further addresses that Samsung is currently the only chip manufacturer with commercialized 3nm GAA process technology.

Samsung announced in June, 2022, that it has started initial production of its 3 nm process node applying Gate-All-Around (GAA) transistor architecture. It claims that compared to 5nm process, the first-generation 3nm process can reduce power consumption by up to 45%, improve performance by 23% and reduce area by 16% compared to 5nm, while the second-generation 3nm process is to reduce power consumption by up to 50%, improve performance by 30% and reduce area by 35%.

An industry source cited by the report indicated that Su’s remarks could be interpreted as AMD planning to officially collaborate with Samsung on 3nm technology. Reports suggest that AMD is preparing to partner with Samsung, as TSMC’s 3nm production capacity has been fully booked by customers like Apple and Qualcomm.

The collaboration between the two companies could be traced back to April this year, as per a report from Korean media outlet viva100, Samsung was said to had signed a new USD 3 billion agreement with processor giant AMD to supply HBM3e 12-layer DRAM for use in the Instinct MI350 series AI chips. Reportedly, Samsung also agreed to purchase AMD GPUs in exchange for HBM products, although details regarding the specific products and quantities involved remain unclear.

Read more

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(Photo credit: AMD)