Samsung Electronics is in fierce competition and collision with TSMC for 3nm chip orders, SF3 is the first 3nm node with GAA-FET technology, Samsung has sent samples for the current major fabless semiconductor design companies, as a demonstration of confidence in performance verification, trying to re-capture the favor of customers.
Samsung claims that its production yields can be maintained in the 60-70% range during the node development phase. It is worth mentioning that the yield rate is very critical to attract customers, because generally large customers will first be based on capacity considerations, followed by wafer cost, and TSMC capacity is currently occupied by Apple.
Previously, Samsung had been criticized for its engineering department in 2022 “fabricated” yield to win customer business controversy. Samsung says 2023-2024 will be dominated by 3nm production, namely SF3 (3GAP) and its improved version SF3P (3GAP+), and the company also plans to start rolling out its 2nm-class nodes in 2025-2026.
Samsung Electronics is said to have received most of its orders from mobile and HPC companies that require high-performance and low-power semiconductors, and the yield of the 3nm process has also entered a stable track compared to the very beginning of mass production. According to a previous report, Samsung’s 3nm process has been ordered by Nvidia, Qualcomm, IBM, Baidu and other companies.
On April 30, TSMC held a North American Foundry Technology Symposium for its large U.S. customers and announced its next-generation foundry advanced process volume production roadmap. TSMC originally planned to mass produce N3E in the second half of this year, but has now postponed it to next year. In addition, the further upgraded N3P and N3X will begin volume production in 2025, and N3A for the automotive industry will begin volume production in 2026.
An industry source said, “It is true that TSMC has a strong influence in the semiconductor industry, with the experience of stabilizing the existing advanced process yields, and is one step ahead in the competition for orders. But this will be a variable until TSMC applies GAA with cost advantages before.”
