By 2018, a number of transistor architectures had been proposed for the eventual replacement of FinFET, most of which were based on the concept of GAAFET: horizontal and vertical nanowires, horizontal nanosheet transistors (Samsung MBCFET, Intel Nanoribbon), vertical FET (VFET) and other vertical transistors, complementary FET (CFET), stacked FET, several kinds of horizontal gate-all-around transistors such as nano-ring, hexagonal wire, square wire, and round wire gate-all-around transistors and negative-capacitance FET (NC-FET) which uses drastically different materials.
In July 2021, Intel unveiled its process node roadmap from 2021 onwards. The company confirmed their 2 nm process node called "Intel 20A", with "A" referring to an angstrom, a unit equivalent to 0.1 nanometers. At the same time, they introduced a new process node naming scheme that aligned their product names with similar designations from their main competitors. Intel's 20A node was at that time projected to have been their first to move from FinFET to gate-all-around transistors (GAAFET); Intel's version was named 'RibbonFET'. Their 2021 roadmap scheduled the Intel 20A node for volume production in 2024 and Intel 18A for 2025.[needs update]
In October 2021, at Samsung Foundry Forum 2021, Samsung announced it would start mass production with its MBCFET (multi-bridge channel FET, Samsung's version of GAAFET) 2 nm process in 2025.[needs update]
In April 2022, TSMC announced its GAAFET N2 process technology would enter risk production phase at the end of 2024 and production phase in 2025. In July 2022, TSMC announced that its N2 process technology was expected to feature backside power delivery and was expected to offer 10–15% higher performance at iso power or 20–30% lower power at iso performance and over 20% higher transistor density compared to N3E.[needs update]
In July 2022, Samsung made a number of disclosures regarding the company's previously forthcoming process technology called "2GAP" (2nm Gate All-around Production): the process previously remained on track for 2025 launch into mass production; number of nanosheets was projected to increase from 3 in "3GAP" to 4; the company worked on several improvements of metallization, namely "single-grain metal" for low-resistance vias and direct-etched metal interconnect planned for 2GAP and beyond.[needs update]
In August 2022, a consortium of Japanese companies funded a new venture with government support called Rapidus for manufacturing of 2 nm chips. Rapidus signed agreements with IMEC and IBM in December 2022.[needs update]
In April 2023, at its Technology Symposium, TSMC introduced two more processes of its 2 nm technology platform: "N2P" featuring backside power delivery and scheduled for 2026, and "N2X" for high-performance applications. It was also revealed that the ARM Cortex-A715 core fabbed on the N2 process using a high-performance standard library was 16.4% faster at the same power, saved 37.2% of power at the same speed, or was ~10% faster and saved ~20% of power simultaneously at the same voltage (0.8 V) compared to the core fabbed on N3E using 3-2 fin library.
In September 2024, Intel announced they would no longer be moving forward with their 20A process node, instead focusing on the development of 18A. Intel projected that avoiding ramping production of 20A could save over half a billion dollars. Intel noted that they'd successfully implemented RibbonFET gate-all-around (GAA) architecture and PowerVia backside power delivery in their 20A process, accelerating 18A development. Intel's Arrow Lake family of processors, which were meant to use Intel 20A, will instead have dies sourced from "external partners" and packaged by Intel.
In December 2021, vertical-transport FET (VTFET) CMOS logic transistor design with a vertical nanosheet was demonstrated at sub-45 nm gate pitch.
Apart from the expected shrinking of transistor structures and interconnects, innovations forecasted by IMEC were as follows:[needs update]
As of 2023, Intel, TSMC and Samsung have all demonstrated CFET transistors. These transistors are made up of two stacked horizontal nanosheet transistors, one transistor is of the p-type (a pFET transistor) and the other transistor is of the n-type (an nFET transistor).
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