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chip shortage is a hot topic in the world, and has attracted widespread attention. Currently, one of the world's top chip foundries is TSMC (TSMC) and Samsung Electronics (Samsung).
As the world's largest chip foundry, TSMC has a share of 56% in the chip foundry market. As the second-generation player in Samsung Electronics, both in business and chip manufacturing technology, has always been thinking about surpassing TSMC.
The current chip competition is essentially a battle for advanced chip processes. Whoever can master higher-end process technology first will have a higher voice and can also receive more orders. Currently, TSMC and Samsung have mastered the mass production process of 5nm process chips.
are now moving towards higher processes 4nm and 3nm processes. Samsung's surround gate (GAA) process officially begins a showdown with TSMC's fin field effect transistor (FinFET) architecture. Which of them is stronger and which one is weaker is also widely concerned in the industry. After all, this is closely related to who they will hand over their future chip foundry orders.
Samsung 3nm chip yield exposed
According to Samsung's news, it is highly likely that the mass production of the 3nm process will be achieved this year. Samsung took the lead in successfully realizing the 3nm process chip slitting chips in June 2021 with TSMC.
For 3nm chips, according to Samsung, the 3nm chip built on its own GAA process has a logic area efficiency of more than 45% higher than the 7nm process, a 50% lower power consumption, and an overall performance of about 35%. From the perspective of paper parameters, it has a more advantage in performance and stability than the chips made by TSMC based on the 3nm FinFET architecture.
According to Korean media reports, Samsung has planned to start construction of a 3nm wafer factory at the P3 factory in Pyeongtaek, South Korea from June to July, and the equipment will also be imported soon.
When Samsung thought it would surpass TSMC in the 3nm process and score a goal, it broke the problem of low yield rate of the 3nm process.
originally planned to implement mass production of the 3nm process this year, but according to DIGITIMES, Samsung's 3nm GAA process yield rate has just reached between 10% and 20%, accounting for only 20% at most. Even the yield rate of 4nm process manufacturing is not satisfactory, less than four layers, reaching only 30%-35%.
It seems that Samsung's plan to mass-produce the 3nm process this year is a failure. Some industry insiders said that Samsung's first-generation 3nm GAA process is unlikely to be adopted by external customers, and it may only be used for the production of its own products in the early stages of mass production. Regarding the yield rate of GAA processes, Samsung said it expects to introduce the second generation of 3GAP technology (3-nanometer process) in 2023.
Samsung got up early and rushed to the evening party. The main reason is that when Samsung first developed the 3nm chip, the 4nm process was produced; the yield rate was problematic again, which led to Samsung spending most of its time and energy on the maintenance and improvement of the 4nm process in the past year. This directly leads to the delay in the research and development progress of the 3nm process.
not only has insufficient yield rates in the 3nm process, but also negative news of forging and falsely reporting the 5nm and 4nm process yield rates. Qualcomm's original order was handed over to TSMC due to yield rates.
TSMC stabilized again
Regarding the "old problem" of Samsung's yield rate, industry insiders said that this time it will be overtaken by TSMC.
According to the Economic Daily, TSMC President Wei Zhejia said at the legal talks that the 3-nanometer process will be put into production in the second half of 2022. At that time, the revenue contribution of the 3nm process will become a large growth node equivalent to 5nm and 7nm.
According to the TSMC's Q1 2022 financial report, in the overall revenue in the first quarter, TSMC's overall revenue reached 491.076 billion NT$ . Among them, the 5nm process and the 7nm process account for as much as 50% of the total sales in the whole season. Among them, the 5nm process accounts for 20%, and the 7nm process accounts for 30%.
"United Daily" reported that based on the 3nm advanced process "N3B", TSMC will conduct synchronous production of the 8th phase of the R&D Center of Hsinchu Factory 12 and the P5 factory of Nanke Factory 18 to achieve mass production of the 3nm process. The initial output is expected to reach between 40,000 and 50,000 pieces per month.
will soon develop a more advanced variant "N3E" process, and the new process is expected to enter production next year. Especially when learning that Samsung's 3nm process has mass production problems, TSMC will accelerate this pace in order to promote orders from several companies in the personal computing industry.
In addition to the 3nm process, TSMC has also made breakthroughs in the 2nm process. TSMC has developed its own 3D Fabric technology (3D packaging technology), and can develop chips with a maximum accuracy of up to 2nm. TSMC CEO Wei Zhejia said that it will strive to achieve mass production of the 2nm process by 2025.
Conclusion
From the above, we can see that the current process technology is still better than TSMC. However, judging from the current technological development, Samsung is still the only foundry company in wafer that can keep up with TSMC. From this perspective, Samsung's strength cannot be underestimated.
Next, Samsung's 3nm node will be more radical, abandoning the FinFET transistor process and vigorously developing the GAA transistor process. Currently, Samsung's chip manufacturing business unit has beaten TSMC and won the title of "world first" in the 3nm GAA field.
But according to data from Yuanda Securities, as of 2020, Samsung had only 7,000 to 10,000 patents in chip manufacturing, but TSMC, which it regards as a competitor, has long owned 35,000 to 37,000 patents. Therefore, the industry generally believes that Samsung's 3nm-related patents are still relatively lacking.
So it remains to be seen whether Samsung can satisfy customers in terms of performance and production capacity of the 3nm process.
What do you think about Samsung's goal of surpassing TSMC? Welcome to leave your unique insights in the comment section.
