Samsung has reportedly improved the yield rates of its 3nm semiconductor chips and is now trying to win back customers that it lost to foundry rival TSMC in recent times. According to the Korean media, the company is sending 3nm prototypes to fabless chipmakers in an attempt to sway them on its side.
It is weaponizing the use of Gate-All-Around (GAA) transistor architecture in its pitch. The GAA tech is said to be more efficient in terms of performance, power, and chip size than the FinFET (Fin field-effect transistor) architecture used by TSMC.
Samsung is desperately trying to close the gap with TSMC in the foundry market
Samsung has long played second fiddle to TSMC in the semiconductor foundry industry. The latter has stretched the gap up top in recent months as the former struggled with its yield rates.
Several fabless companies switched from Samsung to TSMC for manufacturing their next-gen solutions due to this issue. The Taiwanese firm started the mass production of 3nm chips after Samsung but it has already achieved better yield.
However, the latest word from the industry is that Samsung has improved its 3nm yield rates to about 60-70 percent in recent months. It is now desperately trying to steal a few customers from TSMC and close the gap to it in the foundry segment. The journey is quite long (the two firms had a market share of 15.8 percent and 58.8 percent respectively in Q4 2022), but the Korean firm is making its moves.
As said earlier, Samsung is producing its 3nm chips using the GAA architecture. TASM, on the other hand, is sticking to the FinFET tech for one more generation.
It plans to switch to GAA with 2nm chips in 2025. The Korean firm would be using this theoretical upper hand in architecture in its pitch to fabless companies as it sends them early prototypes. By the time TSMC moves to the GAA architecture, Samsung would have about two years of expertise in it.
It remains to be seen if the Korean giant manages to win back a few customers from TSMC. Most of its current 3nm clients are high-performance computing (HPC) companies that need high-performance and low-power semiconductors, the new report states. It also has some mobile customers, but the Taiwanese firm has already captured all the big names.
TSMC isn’t sitting idle either
It’s not like Samsung is making all the moves and TSMC is sitting idle. The Taiwanese firm reportedly held a foundry technology symposium in the US recently. It targeted major customers in the US and unveiled a roadmap for mass production of the next-gen advanced process.
The company has already secured large orders from Apple, AMD, MediaTek, Nvidia, and Qualcomm. It plans to start mass-producing 3nm chips for these customers early next year. TSMC will manufacture 3nm chips for HPC in 2025 and automobiles in 2026.