Some Experts Believe Google Will Be Unwilling to Shift to Samsung’s 3nm Process Since It Is Costly
Google’s Tensor 2 was earlier said to be fabricated on Samsung’s 4nm process, and as far as foundry partners go, the advertising behemoth will not be changing suppliers. Business Korea reports that the Tensor 3 will likely shift to Samsung’s 3nm process in 2023. While Samsung is currently focused on 3nm GAA, it does have plans to start producing products for various clients on its second-generation 3nm GAA process. For those that do not know, the updated node brings notable improvements compared to Samsung’s 5nm process, such as reducing power consumption by up to 50 percent, increasing performance by 30 percent, and reducing area by 35 percent. Unfortunately, the Tensor 3 will likely be mass-produced on the first-generation 3nm GAA process since Samsung is not expected to start using the second-generation variant until 2024. Regardless, we should expect improvements from the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro as far as power efficiency goes because, according to Samsung, its 3nm GAA chips will reduce power consumption by up to 45 percent, improve performance by 23 percent and reduce the area by 16 percent when compared to the manufacturer’s 5nm technology. However, some experts believe that Google will stick with Samsung’s 4nm node instead of jumping to 3nm, as the latter is an expensive process to mass produce smartphone chipsets. Since Google has yet to rival the annual phone shipments figure of Apple and Samsung, giving limited orders for a cutting-edge process might be counter-productive from a cost perspective. We recommend treating this part of the news with a grain of salt for now. There are no specification details available on the Tensor 3 for now, so we will likely start coming across rumors and leaks from the first quarter of 2023, so stay tuned. News Source: Business Korea
