Samsung qualifies 28nm LP process for high-performance mobile applications

Samsung Electronics has announced that its foundry business qualified 28nm low-power (LP) process with High-k Metal Gate (HKMG) technology and is ready for risk production. Additionally, the company has added a new variant to its advanced process technology roadmap, 28nm LPH HKMG.

With more functionality converged into a single system-on-chip (SoC), Samsung claimed its 28nm LP and LPH process technologies offer designers comprehensive solutions to keep pace with the challenges of exploding bandwidth, advanced integrated functionality and low-power constraints.

Samsung's 28nm LP process delivers a cutting-edge process platform with 35% active/standby power reduction at the same frequency or 30% performance boost at the same leakage over 45nm LP SoC designs, according to the company.

The newest process node, 28nm LPH process, has been specifically developed for mobile device applications that can deliver over 2GHz processing performance, Samsung said. 28nm LPH offers 60% of active power reduction at the same frequency or 55% of performance boost at the same leakage over 45nm LP SoC designs.

"We are pleased to offer 28nm LP and LPH process technology with complete design enablement ecosystem to our customers," said KH Kim, executive VP of Samsung's foundry business. "In doing so, our customers are able to design and manufacture chips that offer the best possible user experience on the next generation of smart devices such as smartphones, tablet PCs and Internet TVs."

Together with its 28nm LP and LPH processes, Samsung offers an extensive and comprehensive suite of 28nm LP design enablement solutions from all major ecosystem partners. Samsung EDA solutions include full process design kits (PDKs) and design flows from Synopsys, Cadence, Mentor, and Magma. Samsung also has an expansive licensed portfolio of standard cells, memories, and interface IPs from leading companies including ARM and Synopsys.

Samsung Foundry is currently accepting designs for its 28nm technologies. Multiple customer designs have been silicon-validated, and many more products and IP test chips are being processed at Samsung's logic fab, the S Line, in Giheung, South Korea.