One Week News |Meguiars NAND Flash price increased by about 10% in September..........

2. After the sale, it is forcibly withdrawn, and NWF, the largest wafer factory in the UK, will lay off 100 people

3. Intel Announces to Provide OEM Services for High Tower Semiconductor

In fact, before reaching this deal, Intel announced last month that it would terminate its acquisition of Gaota Semiconductor due to its inability to obtain the regulatory approval required by the merger agreement in a timely manner. So, this time the agreement between the two companies is the latest cooperation plan. In the agreement, it is stated that Intel will provide a new production line for High Tower Semiconductor, with a monthly production capacity of 600000 exposure layers of 12 inch wafers to meet expected demand.

4. They are all 7 nanometers. What is the difference between TSMC, Samsung, Intel, and SMIC?
TSMC: Based on the information shared by WikiChip, TSMC's N7 process has two cell solutions, corresponding to low power consumption and high performance. Among them, the low-power N7 has 91.2 million transistors per square millimeter (i.e. 91.2 MTr/mm) ²)， The high-performance N7 has 65 million transistors per square millimeter (i.e. 65MTr/mm) ²)。
Subsequently, TSMC introduced the N7P process used by Apple A13 and Snapdragon 865, as well as the N7+process using EUV (Extreme Ultraviolet) technology. According to TSMC, thanks to the 4-layer EUV process, the N7+has a 1.2-fold increase in transistor density, a 10% improvement in performance at the same power consumption, and a 15% reduction in power consumption at the same performance. As a result, the HiSilicon Kirin 990 5G version of the chip at that time also benefited.
Samsung: At that time, Samsung was more aggressive in the 7nm process and directly adopted EUV technology. The new process has reduced the mask process by 20%, and also achieved the goal of 40% area reduction, 20% performance increase, and 55% power consumption reduction.
WikiChip data shows that the transistor density of Samsung's 7nm LPP HD high-density cell scheme is 95.08 MTr/mm ²， The transistor density of HP's high-performance solution is 77.01 MTr/mm ²， Overall, it feels like there are slight advantages over TSMC's N7 process, but not as good as the N7+, which also uses EUVs.
Intel: In 2021, Intel believed that the traditional process node naming method based on nanometers would no longer correspond to the actual gate length of transistors, and thus introduced a new process node naming system.
According to the plan at that time, the process previously known as 7 nanometers was renamed Intel 4, fully utilizing EUV lithography technology, which can use ultra short wavelength light to imprint extremely small patterns. With a performance improvement of approximately 20% per watt and chip area improvements, Intel 4 was put into production in the second half of 2022 and shipped in 2023. These products include Meteor Lakes for clients and Granite Rapids for data centers.
SMIC International: Currently, there is not much data on SMIC International's 7nm technology. Some known news shows that SMIC N+1 7nm technology was first used in MinerVA7 Bitcoin Miner ASIC applications, with a relatively small output. Introducing higher Vt value transistors in typical logic circuits is one of the highlights. Afterwards, in order to reduce process complexity and increase production, SMIC International also introduced some collaborative optimization technologies, which may be used for subsequent process nodes.

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