Samsung is in trouble at the 5nm process node

Semiconductor manufacturing is not an easy task, especially with the cutting-edge advanced technology, the progress of each process node is quite difficult. Even if industry giants such as Intel or Samsung have been technically polished and tested in the market for many years, they can still feel the hardships in wafer manufacturing. It is conceivable that TSMC has made steady progress in process technology today, and how much effort has been made behind it.

According to a BusinessKorea report, Samsung is once again in trouble at the 5nm process node and is working hard to increase production capacity. Although Samsung’s 5nm process has been in mass production for a long time, the yield rate is less than 50%, which means that less than half of the chips made on a single silicon wafer can be used, which is definitely not a good thing. Under normal circumstances, a process node enters the mass manufacturing stage, and the yield rate needs to reach about 95%. Below this level, it means that the production efficiency is not high and the profit is difficult to guarantee.

At present, Samsung’s 5nm process production is the V1 production line of Hwaseong fab in Gyeonggi, South Korea. It is Samsung’s most advanced wafer production line and the world’s first dedicated extreme ultraviolet (EUV) production line below 7nm. Which products are more affected, and where the problem lies, these details are not clear for the time being. Samsung started to build a 5nm process production line in February 2020, and then it took several months to complete the manufacturing-related preparations.