Samsung’s wafer foundry goal: surpassing TSMC by 2030

In the past year, Samsung has made a high-profile semiconductor expansion plan, saying that it will invest $151.5 billion in the construction of fabs over the next ten years, and the 3nm GAA process will be mass-produced in the first half of 2022, and the second-generation 3nm process will be mass-produced in 2023. In order to shorten the distance with the leader TSMC by increasing production capacity and speeding up the research and development of process technology.

Image: Samsung

Samsung’s unremitting efforts have also achieved preliminary results. Recently, it was reported that the number of Samsung foundry customers has exceeded 100. However, Samsung’s goal is to have more than 300 customers by 2026, which is obviously a long way to go. With the increase in demand in the foundry market in 2022, Samsung hopes to bloom more and enter a period of comprehensive growth.

It is rumored that Samsung’s mass-produced 4nm process has a low yield rate, which makes the major customer Qualcomm plan to transfer orders to TSMC, and Nvidia is likely to transfer orders for next-generation GPUs to TSMC. In addition to increasing production capacity, the research and development of semiconductor processes are also crucial. Samsung pinned its hopes on the 3nm process node. It is said that compared with the 7nm LPP process, the 3nm chip can have a 35% performance improvement and a 50% reduction in power consumption.

Samsung has rich experience and technology in the semiconductor industry, as well as huge financial support, but it seems to encounter many obstacles in the journey of the foundry business.