The race to 2nm is getting crowded as Intel, Japan’s Rapidus enter the fray
Samsung Electronics has reportedly caught up with rival Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) in advanced processor design, achieving comparable yields for both 4nm and 3nm nodes.
A Hi Investment and Securities report, obtained by Korean local media, puts Samsung’s 4nm yields – the ratio of good chips to bad on a wafer – at about 80 percent. That’s roughly on par with what industry watchers believe TSMC has been able to achieve with its own N4 process.
More impressively, the report indicates that Samsung has been able to achieve 60 percent yields on its 3nm node – which only entered production last year.
This would mean Samsung has managed to achieve yields better than that of TSMC. Back in April, Analysts estimated TSMC’s 3nm yields to be roughly 55 percent.
While reports of foundry yields are often speculative – to say the least – if Samsung has managed to catch up and even exceed TSMC in this regard the Korean chaebol should be well positioned to win back key customers. This will be particularly crucial as demand for leading-edge process nodes used to produce GPUs and other AI accelerators ramps up.
Samsung has lost several key customers to TSMC over the past year. For instance, Nvidia moved production of its consumer GPUs from Samsung’s 8nm process in the Ampere generation – not to be confused with Arm’s Ampere platform – to TSMC’s 4nm for its Ada Lovelace parts.
