Samsung completes development of 5 nm EUV manufacturing process for future flagships

While we've seen a number of flagship chips from Qualcomm, Apple and Huawei being built using the 7 nm FinFet process, Samsung has already begun looking past the 7 nm process node towards 5 nm.Samsung via a blog post has announced that the company has completed development of a 5 nm semiconductor process using its extreme ultraviolet (EUV) technology. Compared to its EUV-based 7 nm process, the new 5 nm process is claimed by Samsung to make chips 25 percent smaller and 20 percent more power efficient.[caption id="attachment_5556091" align="alignnone" width="1024"]

The 8 nm Samsung Exynos 9820 SoC comes with an NPU. Image: Samsung[/caption]Samsung currently manufactures its EUV-based process technologies at the S3-line in Hwaseong, Korea. The company will be expanding the production to a new EUV line in Hwaseong soon which is expected to be functional by the end of 2019.It's still too early to tell but given the roadmap of the 7 nm process, Samsung will likely start mass producing the new 5 nm chips in 2020, just in time for the next Galaxy S lineup.In addition to the new 5 nm node, Samsung has also begun work on 6 nm EUV-based chips in collaboration with some of its customers. Our best guess is that this is a lower cost process than the 5 nm and will be better suited for mid-range to upper mid-range smartphones in 2020.The news also arrives a day after TSMC announced that it was planning to mass produce its own 7 nm EUV-based chips in Q2 this year.