Samsung Electronics has reportedly won a foundry (contract chip manufacturing) deal to produce IBM's next-generation data center chip, the Power11, for one of the top five corporations in the data center central processing unit (CPU) market. Samsung Electronics plans to supply IBM with the new chip by boosting performance and yield through an improved 7-nanometer (7LPP) process.
According to the industry on the 19th, the Samsung Electronics foundry division plans to produce IBM's next-generation server CPU, the Power11 chip, using an improved 7-nanometer process. Samsung Electronics, in collaboration with IBM, intends to apply "2.5D ISC architecture packaging" technology to the chip to maximize performance.
The 7LPP process is characterized by being the world's first to apply EUV (extreme ultraviolet) lithography technology to a 7-nanometer process, enabling the implementation of more precise and finer circuit patterns. Compared with the previous process, performance is known to improve by 23% and power consumption to decrease by 45%, strengthening overall efficiency.
On top of that, advanced packaging processes further upgraded chip performance. The 2.5D ISC architecture packaging refers to advanced chip packaging technology used in high-performance semiconductors, and in particular, by placing multiple chips (dies) in close proximity within a single package, it can raise data transfer speeds.
Combining data from major market research firms, IBM is one of the top five companies in the data center CPU market. Although its sales scale lags behind Intel, AMD, and Nvidia, it targets niche markets such as corporations, finance, and high-performance computing (HPC) to build a solid customer base.
IBM's next-generation server chip Power11 offers 99.9999% data center uptime, featuring high power efficiency that enables system maintenance without downtime. IBM said, "It was designed as the most resilient server chip in IBM Power platform history." Power11 comes with built-in quantum-resistant cryptography certified by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and includes functions that protect systems from harvest-now, decrypt-later attacks and firmware integrity attacks.
Samsung Electronics is diversifying its customer base by building foundry order performance around mature processes with yields of 70% to 80% or higher. The strategy is to exploit the production capacity shortfalls of TSMC, which is focusing on cutting-edge process production by continuously improving the performance of existing mature processes (5-, 7-, and 8-nanometer).
The Samsung Electronics foundry division is in talks not only over a recent deal with Tesla but also with Japan's Nintendo, as well as Chinese fabless (semiconductor design corporations), to manufacture artificial intelligence (AI) chips and application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs). In particular, the number of Chinese fabless companies using 4-nanometer, 8-nanometer, and 14-nanometer processes—where Samsung Foundry has reportedly secured yields at a certain level recently—appears to be increasing.
A semiconductor industry official said, "Chinese fabless companies prefer Samsung Electronics because the yields and performance of Chinese foundry company SMIC's sub-7-nanometer processes are unstable," adding, "Samsung Electronics is also working to attract customers by boosting chip performance and productivity through a method that combines EUV lithography technology with mature processes."