While TSMC has a higher yield than Samsung Foundry on the 4nm node, Samsung’s yield at 3nm tops TSMC’s.
Investment firm KMIB News (via fudzilla) reports that TSMC’s 80% yield on 4nm chip production tops Samsung Foundry’s 75%. The yield is the percentage of dies on a silicon wafer that meets quality control. While TSMC ‘s yield tops Samsung Foundry at 4nm, it’s a different story at the current cutting-edge 3nm node where Samsung’s yield is at 60% compared to 55% for TSMC.90% of TSMC’s 3nm production is believed to be dedicated to Apple for the latter’s A17 Bionic SoC. The chipset will be employed by the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max later this year and those phones will probably be the only major handsets released in 2023 to be powered by a 3nm applications processor. The A17 Bionic should be more powerful and energy efficient than the 4nm A16 Bionic chipset thanks to the additional transistors that the smaller feature size of the 3nm node allows for.If Samsung Foundry’s 3nm yield continues to top TSMC’s 3nm yield, the company could win back some of the business it lost when its 4nm yield was a disappointing 35% early in 2022 compared to TSMC’s 70%.
