Samsung Electronics Co., the world's top memory chip and smartphone maker, said Monday it has begun mass production of the most advanced mobile application processor (AP) that incorporates FinFET technology.

The 14-nanometer mobile AP comes in a 3-dimensional chip, known as the FinFET structure, that is 35 percent more energy-efficient with performance up by 20 percent compared with the preceding 20-nanometer planar chips, the company said in an emailed statement.

The FinFET processing, with which Samsung has outrun its Taiwanese rival TSMC, has emerged as a new growth driver for the South Korean tech powerhouse, whose annual profit hit the lowest in three years in 2014.

Samsung said it plans to apply the 14-nanometer FinFET technology to Exynos 7 Octa, the company's own mobile AP, which is widely predicted by analysts to be installed in Samsung's next flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S6, scheduled to be released March 1.

U.S. Apple Inc. is presumed to use Samsung's FinFET-based mobile APs for its upcoming iPhone 6S lineup.

A Samsung executive said in a conference call following its third-quarter earnings release that it had started making the advanced chips for mobile APs for customers it refused to identify, but many analysts understood it as meaning Samsung succeeded in luring the U.S. smartphone maker away from TSMC.

Samsung said it will shore up efforts for a leap in the System LSI sector, the AP-making division, through the 14-nanometer FinFET production, while maintaining its lead in the memory chip unit with 3-dimensional V-NAND products. (Yonhap)