Samsung is one of the leading chip manufacturers globally and with its new “3D” transistor stacking production method, it’s showing the world once again why it has remained as one of the top companies in this field.
If you’ve never seen a chip up close, they’re small. Like, really quite small. There isn’t a lot of room on those little guys for all of the tech that actually ends up going on one. And yet, somehow, companies like Samsung figure out how to make that all work. These components all by their lonesome are quite small. Considerably smaller than the chips that they make up. The transistors, of course, are one of those components and they up a notable amount of space already. That’s where Samsung’s new method of stacking transistors aims to break things wide open and allow for a new and more innovative approach to chip production. Especially when chips themselves are being made smaller and smaller.
Samsung says that urban city expansion is a good analogy for its 3D stacked transistor method
What happens when you have a city that grows so large that you eventually end out of space to expand horizontally? City planners build upwards. Stacking more floors on top of more floors and building toward the sky to add more vertical space. This is that Samsung is doing with its new way of making chips that demand more and more transistors.
To avoid complications of running out of room, it’s stacking transistors on top of each other to account for the increases in transistor necessity while leaving room for other necessary components. It’s ingenious, really. Samsung is calling these 3D Stacked FETs. While this idea will no doubt open up a world of possibilities, it doesn’t come without its challenges. Samsung says there are three main challenges that need to be overcome.
For one, it needs to make sure that there is a sufficient path for current conduction. It also says that “multiple channel layers must be formed uniformly and with high crystalline quality,” and that “upper and lower transistors must be electrically isolated from one another.” Samsung says it has already started to figure out solutions to each of these challenges. With those hurdles out of the way, Samsung can move forward with producing chips with considerably higher transistor density for much higher performance.
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