Samsung announces 3nm MBCFET

[Stroal]

https://www.anandtech.com/show/14333/samsung-announces-3nm-gaa-mbcfet-pdk-version-01

 

Quote

 

Today’s announcement is that Samsung is offering its first alpha version of the PDK for its first generation 3nm process that uses MBCFETs. Samsung is calling this process its ‘3GAE’ process, and this alpha version will allow its partners to start getting to grips with some of the new design rules for its 3GAE process.

Samsung is making a lot of promises with its first 3GAE process. One of the headlines is lowering the operating voltage from 0.75 volts to 0.70 volts, which will be a good step in power. The headline PPA values that Samsung is announcing are also impressive: compared to 7nm, 3GAE will offer 1.35x performance, 0.5x power, with a 0.65x die area.

 

 

 

My thoughts:

While I think 3nm MBCFET is a ways off for consumer end, this announcement is a game changer, especially considering Intel's current position, their inability to hit 10nm, and considering their rival, AMD, is just starting on 7nm. Hopefully we'll see some collaboration between the 2 major CPU players in regards to this technology, which I think could bring it to the market even faster.  

[LukeSavenije]

20 minutes ago, Stroal said:

this announcement is a game changer

you realize it's a annoucement? it can one: still take years

 

and two: TSMC is already working on a more dence 7nm ("6nm) and already announced 5nm

 

it's still pretty cool tho

[Stroal]

Just now, LukeSavenije said:

you realize it's a annoucement? it can one: still take years

 

and two: TSMC is already working on a more dence 7nm ("6nm) and already announced 5nm

 

it's still pretty cool tho

Yeah, I mean it's in the title.  But TSMC is using FinFet for their 5nm design.  It's nothing really new, just smaller FF. 

[Arika]

Wonder what material they are going to use to prevent quantum tunneling which was the reason most people didn't think you could go smaller than 7nm.

 

sometimes i think people forget that Samsung is the largest Semiconductor manufacturer in the world since everyone gets caught up on TSMC and Intel, though that might be because their focus isn't on Microprocessors. would love to see Samsung join the race for CPUs though

[Stroal]

2 minutes ago, VegetableStu said:

samsung only does NAND and ARM stuff don't they? ._.

I mean still great anyway, maybe 4TB 3LC m.2 SSDs next time

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okay sorry i'm really dicking around ,_,

 

samsung only does NAND and ARM stuff don't they? ._.
I mean still great anyway, maybe 4TB 3LC m.2 SSDs next time

 

That's all they do now, but they are the largest semiconductor manufacturing in the world. I'd love to see a collab between them and Intel / AMD. It would benefit both companies. I could at least see them licensing MBCFET, as it seems to be a better way forward over FF.

[Trixanity]

1 minute ago, VegetableStu said:

samsung only does NAND and ARM stuff don't they? ._.

I mean still great anyway, maybe 4TB 3LC m.2 SSDs next time

  Hide contents

okay sorry i'm really dicking around ,_,

 

samsung only does NAND and ARM stuff don't they? ._.
I mean still great anyway, maybe 4TB 3LC m.2 SSDs next time

 

Samsung is a lot of things; one of them is a foundry. They can make anything you want as long as you pay.

 

If you want examples they've made some Nvidia GPUs. I also think IBM will use them for some upcoming high performance CPUs or so I've heard.

[LukeSavenije]

5 minutes ago, VegetableStu said:

oh right, completely forgot o_o

hmm interesting interesting. at least there's a paper comparison I can pair TSMC to now (with regards to GPU applications)

i mean... you have glofo too, but it's getting behind Samsung and tsmc

[LukeSavenije]

4 minutes ago, VegetableStu said:

unless they have surprise plans for 5nm, I feel like they're out of the race ever since their decision to stop their own 7nm ._.

i mean... some speculate it being sold to either skhynix or samsung...

 

right now they only manufacture some things for amd that I'm aware of, but even they will go to tsmc for 7nm

[yian88]

40 minutes ago, Arika S said:

Wonder what material they are going to use to prevent quantum tunneling which was the reason most people didn't think you could go smaller than 7nm.

 

sometimes i think people forget that Samsung is the largest Semiconductor manufacturer in the world since everyone gets caught up on TSMC and Intel, though that might be because their focus isn't on Microprocessors. would love to see Samsung join the race for CPUs though

CPU's are by far the most important product from fabs, x86 and ARM, they have only produced mobile optimized ARM's, when high clocks and high performance/density is the problem their technology maybe wont be that good. They did produce GPU's for nvidia but GPU's are not CPU's, they run at much lower clocks, and yields while still important its not as damaging since GPU have many units that can be disabled if faulty, CPU's not so much.

[Sauron]

1 hour ago, LukeSavenije said:

you realize it's a annoucement? it can one: still take years

 

and two: TSMC is already working on a more dence 7nm ("6nm) and already announced 5nm

At least now we know 3nm is possible - which wasn't a given since we're really close to the physical limits of silicon

[pas008]

what has nodes really done for consumers since 32 nm besides lower the cost or energy at times?

[Sauron]

Just now, pas008 said:

what has nodes really done for consumers since 32 nm besides lower the cost or energy at times?

It has doubled the core count in 95w parts, boosted stock frequencies by over a GHz on similar architectures and decreased power draw on laptops allowing for thinner and lighter products. Seems good to me.

[pas008]

3 minutes ago, Sauron said:

It has doubled the core count in 95w parts, boosted stock frequencies by over a GHz on similar architectures and decreased power draw on laptops allowing for thinner and lighter products. Seems good to me.

core count has always been around just premium-ed til amd started core wars 2 which they are winning this time

remember 22nm had stock of 4ghz on dc and 4.4 on boost

and sandy bridge 32nm was quite easy to get 4.5 using STOCK cooler acted like 7700k

[HalGameGuru]

This is interesting, I like the vertical scaling, not sure how that works in lithography. I want to see more on this. I like the idea of converting existing FinFET designs to MBCFET and seeing what kind of changes to power and performance will be seen.

[Doobeedoo]

Oh wow this is very interesting. Pushing the shrinking process further. Silicon, how much will you last. 

[Stroal]

26 minutes ago, Doobeedoo said:

Oh wow this is very interesting. Pushing the shrinking process further. Silicon, how much will you last. 

I don't think it will be much longer. I'm interested to see what's the plan is. It could be stacking, but I doubt we're getting much smaller than 3nm. I'd imagine there is work being done regarding graphene and molybdenite as a way forward. Or at least I hope there is. 

[Sauron]

1 hour ago, pas008 said:

core count has always been around just premium-ed til amd started core wars 2 which they are winning this time

remember 22nm had stock of 4ghz on dc and 4.4 on boost

You're not listening - it has doubled the core count on 95w parts. Without compromising the singe core performance. FX cpu modules were hardly the same thing as two zen cores. Also, AMD will launch a 64 core part soon - we never got anything close to that. Intel has been crawling up to 28 cores at a painfully slow 2 cores at a time, at ludicrous production costs, because they 1) couldn't shrink their process and 2) don't have a modular design like AMD. AMD on the other hand went straight for 32 cores and is doubling that thanks to their upcoming die shrink.

 

This would not be possible without 7nm tech - you can clearly see how those 8 chips wouldn't fit if they were twice the size.

1 hour ago, pas008 said:

and sandy bridge 32nm was quite easy to get 4.5 using STOCK cooler acted like 7700k

95w sandy was 4 cores max - and no, you couldn't get 4.5 on the stock cooler without overheating. I have one, the stock cooler is barely enough to keep it from overheating at stock speeds. Also just because Intel didn't use the lower process nodes to make a better cpu doesn't mean the potential wasn't there, and AMD came in and used it forcing Intel to step up their game.

 

Node shrinks are literally the main reason we have advancements in CPU technology at all. There's only so much you can tweak to get better performance and only so many cores you can fit on a die - unless you shrink the whole thing.

[cj09beira]

 

2 hours ago, LukeSavenije said:

i mean... some speculate it being sold to either skhynix or samsung...

 

right now they only manufacture some things for amd that I'm aware of, but even they will go to tsmc for 7nm

well global foundries is specializing on different nodes that others dont offer, a good example of this is their new 12nm planar node which seems great promising power and cost savings 

[pas008]

15 minutes ago, Sauron said:

You're not listening - it has doubled the core count on 95w parts. Without compromising the singe core performance. FX cpu modules were hardly the same thing as two zen cores. Also, AMD will launch a 64 core part soon - we never got anything close to that. Intel has been crawling up to 28 cores at a painfully slow 2 cores at a time, at ludicrous production costs, because they 1) couldn't shrink their process and 2) don't have a modular design like AMD. AMD on the other hand went straight for 32 cores and is doubling that thanks to their upcoming die shrink.

 

This would not be possible without 7nm tech - you can clearly see how those 8 chips wouldn't fit if they were twice the size.

95w sandy was 4 cores max - and no, you couldn't get 4.5 on the stock cooler without overheating. I have one, the stock cooler is barely enough to keep it from overheating at stock speeds. Also just because Intel didn't use the lower process nodes to make a better cpu doesn't mean the potential wasn't there, and AMD came in and used it forcing Intel to step up their game.

 

Node shrinks are literally the main reason we have advancements in CPU technology at all. There's only so much you can tweak to get better performance and only so many cores you can fit on a die - unless you shrink the whole thing.

temps were at 75-80 on stock

2600k hit 4.9 with mid sixties on d14

 

fyi I had few sandy bridge cpus it was easy

and there is many articles/threads/reviews/etc on them hitting 5ghz too

 

yes i know node shrinks help but how to the consumer? really how? they get more and consumers get same price pretty much even with new nodes

maybe few hundred mhz if that

cores would be same thing if amd didnt start this core wars 2

 

tweaks to isa get advancements too plus many others

[cj09beira]

i would like to see this transistors sooner than 3 nm, and i wonder what material will replace Si soon, there are a bunch of them with good characteristics 

[Zodiark1593]

8 minutes ago, pas008 said:

temps were at 75-80 on stock

2600k hit 4.9 with mid sixties on d14

 

fyi I had few sandy bridge cpus it was easy

and there is many articles/threads/reviews/etc on them hitting 5ghz too

 

yes i know node shrinks help but how to the consumer? really how? they get more and consumers get same price pretty much even with new nodes

maybe few hundred mhz if that

cores would be same thing if amd didnt start this core wars 2

The node shrinks were pretty important on the mobile side too. 32nm peaked with the Apple A5X used in the iPad 3, which was hot, quite power hungry and was just barely enough performance to drive the display. 28nm or lower was really necessary here.

[Sauron]

10 minutes ago, pas008 said:

temps were at 75-80 on stock

2600k hit 4.9 with mid sixties on d14

On an NHD14, sure... on modern chips 4.9 is little more than stock.

11 minutes ago, pas008 said:

fyi I had few sandy bridge cpus it was easy

and there is many articles/threads/reviews/etc on them hitting 5ghz too

We're talking about what's possible on the stock cooler, 5GHz on sandy required a beefy aftermarket cooler like the nhd14.

11 minutes ago, pas008 said:

yes i know node shrinks help but how to the consumer? really how? they get more and consumers get same price pretty much even with new nodes

I already gave you multiple benefits to the consumer. Without die shrinks sandy bridge would still be the best we could get. The prices stagnated for a while but now they're back to how they should be - about half, in terms of price to performance, compared to sandy.

13 minutes ago, pas008 said:

maybe few hundred mhz if that

A full GHz on stock cooling, with twice as many cores.

14 minutes ago, pas008 said:

cores would be same thing if amd didnt start this core wars 2

Again, FX cores were completely different and didn't perform as well as Intel's cores. Right now we have twice as many cores that are individually faster than single sandy cores.

15 minutes ago, pas008 said:

tweaks to isa get advancements too plus many others

Tweaks to the ISA only help in specific fields, they definitely didn't give "consumers" nearly as much extra value as just doubling the cores.

[pas008]

2 minutes ago, Sauron said:

On an NHD14, sure... on modern chips 4.9 is little more than stock.

We're talking about what's possible on the stock cooler, 5GHz on sandy required a beefy aftermarket cooler like the nhd14.

I already gave you multiple benefits to the consumer. Without die shrinks sandy bridge would still be the best we could get. The prices stagnated for a while but now they're back to how they should be - about half, in terms of price to performance, compared to sandy.

A full GHz on stock cooling, with twice as many cores.

Again, FX cores were completely different and didn't perform as well as Intel's cores. Right now we have twice as many cores that are individually faster than single sandy cores.

Tweaks to the ISA only help in specific fields, they definitely didn't give "consumers" nearly as much extra value as just doubling the cores.

where are you getting a full ghz?

amd is responsible for more cores

 

like i said they get more we get less

look at it in silicon size we are getting less of the wafer by far they are getting more per wafer

prices didnt change really actually been up cpus/ram/gpus

32nm we had bigger chunk of the wafer 5ghz was achievable for enthusiasts and barely still is lol amd isnt hitting 5ghz yet and intel is doing more cores because of AMD

 

[Trixanity]

41 minutes ago, pas008 said:

where are you getting a full ghz?

amd is responsible for more cores

 

like i said they get more we get less

look at it in silicon size we are getting less of the wafer by far they are getting more per wafer

prices didnt change really actually been up cpus/ram/gpus

32nm we had bigger chunk of the wafer 5ghz was achievable for enthusiasts and barely still is lol amd isnt hitting 5ghz yet and intel is doing more cores because of AMD

 

How do you think they can fit more cores on smaller chips?

 

How much do you think it costs to develop process nodes?

[pas008]

5 minutes ago, Trixanity said:

How do you think they can fit more cores on smaller chips?

 

How much do you think it costs to develop process nodes?

point below

3 hours ago, pas008 said:

what has nodes really done for consumers since 32 nm besides lower the cost or energy at times?