Samsung will use its most advanced manufacturing process to make chips for four prominent technology companies, and the race to overtake TSMC as the world’s largest chip foundry is on, while geopolitical conflicts are tearing the old economic balance apart. Samsung has been chosen as a manufacturing partner by four of the world’s largest technology companies, according to industry sources who asked not to be named.
NVIDIA, Qualcomm, IBM and Baidu will use the South Korean company’s latest manufacturing process to bring their future products to market, while Samsung hopes to gain an edge against TSMC in the chip foundry race.
Samsung will use the recently announced 3-nanometer node to supply chips in large quantities to fabless companies starting as early as 2024. NVIDIA will use the 3-nanometer node to make its next-generation GPUs, IBM will make its own CPUs, Qualcomm needs Arm chips for smartphones, and Baidu will use 3-nanometer technology for its cloud data centers.
Samsung began mass manufacturing 3nm chips back in June. The company says its latest manufacturing technology delivers substantial improvements in power efficiency (45%) and chip performance (23%) compared to the previous generation’s 5nm node.
A second-generation 3nm process is already in development, as Samsung says there is still plenty of room to further improve efficiency and performance.
While the company has made progress in the 3nm race, Samsung is the second largest chip foundry, well behind TSMC, which has about three times the market share of Samsung. TSMC is working to expand its manufacturing outside of Taiwan, starting with a new plant in the United States. Meanwhile, Samsung already has an international approach to its business, as they have manufacturing plants in Korea (Gilheung, Hwaseong, Pyeongtaek), the US (Austin, Tyler) and China (Xi’an).
Samsung is known for ruling the memory particle business, but the current situation could help them overtake TSMC as a rival manufacturing superpower, with many “big tech” companies also looking for new partners.
