In the advanced process competition, Samsung and TSMC has been the leading two, and the two companies can be described as a moment, Samsung in the last 10 years by TSMC all kinds of suppression, until the end of June on the 3nm process Samsung finally moved back to a game, preempting the mass production of 3nm, and is the GAA transistor technology.
In contrast, TSMC’s 3nm process is still based on mature FinFET transistor technology, with volume production in September, and GAA transistors will not be used until 2024 on the 2nm process, which is indeed one time ahead of Samsung in terms of technological advancement.
However Samsung won the face, but the first 3nm process is still embarrassing – Samsung has few customers to use, and the only customer that can be identified is a Chinese miner chip maker PanSemi (Shanghai PanSemi Semiconductor Technology Co., Ltd.).
A few days ago the Korean media said that Samsung found a second 3nm customer, a phone chip maker, and even rumors of oversupply of capacity, however, this customer in the end who has not been clear.
TSMC side is the opposite, in addition to Apple will debut 3nm process, AMD, Qualcomm, NVIDIA, MediaTek, Broadcom and other traditional customers will almost also choose TSMC 3nm, Intel will also use TSMC’s 3nm manufacturing GPU module on the 15th generation Core, these customers are basically confirmed.
For Samsung, although the 3nm GAA process has achieved lead, and foundry prices compared to TSMC there are advantages, but the impact of past negative issues such as yield, capacity and energy efficiency has not been completely eliminated, TSMC is still a stable and reliable choice for semiconductor majors.
