If recent reports are accurate that TSMC and Samsung can’t get their 3nm nodes to yield well, it could become a big problem for cutting-edge silicon.
Both TSMC and Samsung have recently launched their 3nm processes, and the first products using these nodes have already hit the shelves. These include Apple’s A17 iPhone chip fabbed at TSMC and two cryptocurrency mining ASICs at Samsung. New process nodes tend to initially have poor yields, and this is what happened with TSMC’s and Samsung’s respective 3nm nodes, but while yields are supposed to improve over the course of several months, one report claims that TSMC and Samsung are still struggling to get good yields with their brand-new nodes.
The report comes from Korean publication Choson Biz, which published an article about TSMC and Samsung’s 3nm woes. Both companies are reportedly still stuck in the 50% to 60% yield range, which basically means almost half of each chip produced is either not fully functional (and perhaps salvageable) or completely broken.
