Samsung developed 8nm RF to expand 5G chip solutions

On June 09, 2021, Samsung introduced its latest 8-nanometer (nm) process-based radio frequency (RF) technology. This new 8nm RF chip architecture offers up to a 35% increase in power efficiency and 35% decrease in the logic area compared to the traditional 14nm RF.

Specifically for 5G communications, this cutting-edge foundry technology could provide a ‘one chip solution’ with support for multi-channel and multi-antenna chip designs. It’s expected that the 8nm RF platform extension will expand Samsung’s leadership in the 5G semiconductor market from sub-6GHz to mmWave applications.

Including 28nm- and 14nm-based RF, Samsung 8nm RF process technology is the latest addition to an already broad portfolio of RF-related solutions. Since 2017, the company has established its leading position in the RF market by shipping more than 500 million mobile RF chips for high-end smartphones.

Hyung Jin Lee, Master of Foundry Technology Development Team at Samsung said, “As 5G mmWave expands, Samsung’s 8nm RF will be a great solution for customers looking for long battery life and excellent signal quality on compact mobile devices.”

Samsung’s New RFeFET™ Architecture

With the continuous expansion of advanced nodes, the performance, power consumption, and area (PPA) of digital circuits have been significantly improved, while in analog/RF modules, due to the increase in resistance of narrow line widths such as degraded parasitics, this has not been achieved. Class improvements.

As a result, degradation of RF characteristics is observed in most communication chips, such as degradation of the amplification performance of the reception frequency and increased power consumption.

In addition, Samsung has developed, RFextremeFET (RFeFET™), a unique architecture exclusive to 8nm RF to overcome the analog/RF scaling challenges. Compared to 14nm RF, Samsung’s RFeFET™ supplements the digital PPA scaling and restores the analog/RF scaling at the same time, thereby enabling high-performance 5G platforms.

Samsung’s process optimization maximizes channel dynamics while minimizing parasites. As the performance of RFeFET™ is greatly improved, the total number of transistors in the RF chip and the area of ​​the analog/RF block can be reduced.

Compared with 14 nm RF, due to the RFEFET™ architecture innovation, Samsung’s 8 nm RF process technology has increased power efficiency by 35%, and the RF chip area has been reduced by 35%.

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