Samsung Loses Orders to TSMC in 3nm Market
TapTechNews June 18 - BusinessKorea reported today that Samsung has lost the orders from Google and Qualcomm due to problems with the yield and energy efficiency of 3nm mass production.
TapTechNews quoted the media that TSMC has received the 3nm orders from Google and Qualcomm, so it has gathered most of the 3nm process orders currently.
As of June 18, there are 7 major companies using TSMC for 3nm design, including NVIDIA, AMD, Intel, Apple, Qualcomm, MediaTek, and Google, and they are all giving priority to TSMC's 3-nanometer manufacturing process.
Samsung announced the mass production of 3nm process as early as 3 years ago and announced the first mass production of 3nm Gate-all-around (GAAFET) process in the industry in 2022, but the performance of the first-generation 3nm process (SF3E) in terms of yield and efficiency has been lower than expected.
The report also pointed out that the yield rate of the Exynos 2500 chip developed by the Samsung SystemLSI Division and adopting the internal Samsung Foundry 3nm process is also disappointing.
According to the analysis, Samsung Electronics attaches great importance to controlling power consumption and heat, but its performance is still 10-20% lower than that of TSMC. With the expansion of artificial intelligence services in the mobile and server markets, the energy efficiency of chips has become a key factor.
A representative of a global major foundry company said: The main reason why big customers choose TSMC is the different power consumption efficiency of the chips provided by the two companies in the cutting-edge process. Although TSMC has increased the production cost of 3nm chips by more than 25%, the reason for choosing TSMC is the significant performance difference compared to 5nm.
The gap in the foundry market share between TSMC and Samsung Electronics is also widening. According to TrendForce, the market share of Samsung Electronics' foundry decreased slightly from 11.3% in the fourth quarter of last year to 11% in the first quarter of this year. Meanwhile, although the demand for smartphones has declined, TSMC's market share increased from 61.2% to 61.7% during the same period.