The first Samsung 5nm SoC is ready for sampling

Earlier today (April 16, 2019), Samsung Electronics announced that its development of its next-level chipset platform is now complete. This new design involves a 5-nanometer (5nm) architecture, whereas the current state of the art involves 7nm counterparts. Therefore, 5nm processors could have significant advantages over 7nm hardware, as the latter did in relation to older solutions such as 10nm, and so on.

Samsung has asserted that the 5nm platform could offer as much as a 25% greater logic-area efficiency compared to 7nm. It could also use 20% less energy. However, it could also be 10% more powerful compared to the slightly older architecture.

As for the OEM's 7nm chips themselves, it has also stated that they are now in mass-production. Therefore, the next generation of Samsung's processors could use these smaller, more streamlined SoCs compared to the 8nm Exynos flagships found in the Galaxy S10 series.

The new 5nm samples that are now available to potential purchasers have been fabricated using the industry-leading extreme UV lithography (EUV) process, as are the upcoming 7nm chips. Samsung claims that this process has almost literally been scaled down from 7nm to 5nm directly.

Therefore, device designers who will have gained a familiarity with the company's design for the former may be able to translate what they have learned to the latter quickly and easily. In practice, this could mean devices based on these cutting-edge CPUs could be here in a shorter time-frame than would have been possible otherwise.