Two years after starting mass production on its 3nm process node, Samsung is finally ready to make 3nm Exynos processors for Android smartphones. In a joint press release with partner Synopsys, the Korean firm said it “has achieved successful production tape-out for its high-performance mobile SoC design” based on its Gate-All-Around (GAA) process technology. The company switched from the FinFET to GAA transistor architecture for its 3nm chips.
Samsung is ready to mass produce its first 3nm smartphone chip
Samsung Foundry started 3nm mass production in mid-2022, a few months before TSMC. However, while the latter has already made a 3nm smartphone chip for Apple—last year’s A17 Pro for the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max—the former has yet to use its 3nm process for high-performance mobile SoCs. That is finally changing this year. Rumors say Samsung’s first 3nm mobile SoC will be a wearable chip for the Galaxy Watch 7 series.
It will follow up with another a few months later, the Exynos 2500 for the Galaxy S25 series. Ahead of that, Samsung has confirmed that its 3nm GAA process technology is ready to churn out high-performance mobile chipsets. In semiconductor manufacturing, taping out is the final stage of the design process. The chip design is now ready for mass production. The Korean firm will soon start making its rumored 3nm chip for the upcoming watches.
Samsung’s first 3nm smartphone chipset will include “a broad portfolio of Synopsys IP” alongside flagship CPUs and GPUs. “Our longstanding collaboration has delivered leading-edge SoC designs. This is a remarkable milestone to successfully achieve the highest performance, power, and area on the most advanced mobile CPU cores and SoC designs in collaboration with Synopsys,” said Kijoon Hong, vice president of SLSI at Samsung.
The CPUs in question should be ARM’s stock Cortex solutions. Samsung stopped designing custom CPU cores a few years back. It now makes custom GPUs, though. The company teamed up with AMD to bring the latter’s RDNA graphics technology to mobile SoCs with its Xclipse GPU lineup. initially exclusive to flagship Exynos processors, Samsung’s Xclipse GPUs are also found in mid-range chips, including the Galaxy A55’s Exynos 1480.
The Galaxy Watch 7 series may debut in July
Rumors say Samsung will launch the Galaxy Watch 7 series at its next Galaxy Unpacked event in July. If true, its first 3nm mobile processor is just a few months away, though we will have to wait longer for its first 3nm smartphone chipset. The upcoming Unpacked will also bring Samsung’s next-gen foldables, the Galaxy Z Fold 6 and Galaxy Z Flip 6. We may also get new Galaxy tablets, TWS earbuds, and the Galaxy Ring‘s market release in July.
