Semiconductor giant Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. said today it’s planning to begin manufacturing its first two-nanometer computer chips for smartphones and other mobile devices by 2025.

The company’s Samsung Foundry business unit, which accounts for the bulk of its revenue, unveiled its chipmaking roadmap at a forum today in San Jose, California, saying its two-nanometer process will help to address customer needs amid the growing demand for hardware that’s able to support the latest advancements in artificial intelligence.

Samsung said it will be able to make two-nanometer application processors for mobile applications first, before expanding to other use cases in later years.

Nanometers is a measurement that describes the channel length of the billions of transistors that make up a single computer chip. The smaller the channel length is, the more transistors can be packed onto the chip, improving its performance.

The Samsung Foundry business serves some of the biggest smartphone manufacturers in the world, including Qualcomm Inc. and its own smartphone business unit.

In 2026, Samsung said it will offer two-nanometer chips for high-performance computing applications, followed by automotive chips in 2027.

Customers have reasons to be excited by Samsung’s two-nanometer process. The company claims its most advanced chips made using the process have shown a 12% performance increase, and a 25% improvement in power efficiency, over its previous three-nanometer process. Samsung launched its three-nanometer process last year, becoming the first chipmaker in the world to do so.

Looking ahead, Samsung confirmed its plans to begin mass production of its first 1.4nm chips in 2027.

Samsung Foundry has a busy roadmap ahead. Besides advancing its chipmaking process, it will also start offering contract manufacturing services for eight-inch gallium nitride power management chips, which support a range of consumer, data center and automotive applications. Those will become available in 2025, the company said.

That same year, Samsung will also start producing five-nanometer radio frequency chips to support 6G networking technology. The RF chips will be made using Samsung’s five-nanometer process, and provide a 40% increase in power efficiency over its previous 14-nanometer RF chips.

The company also has plans to increase its manufacturing capacity. For instance, by 2027, it will have expanded its total clean room space by 7.3 times from what it was in 2021. Samsung is planning to expand its cutting-edge facility at Pyeongtaek, South Korea (pictured), in order to achieve this. By adding more clean rooms, Samsung said it will be able to serve additional customers. It will also increase capacity at its new fab that’s currently being built in Taylor, Texas.

Finally, Samsung revealed it has formed a new Multi-Die Integration Alliance with various manufacturing partners. As part of the MDI Alliance, Samsung will collaborate with its partners to create new, customized packaging technologies for applications in the high-performance computing and automotive industries.

Photo: Samsung Foundry