Samsung Electronics is reportedly in talks with electric carmaker Tesla for the next-generation self-driving chips based on the South Korean giant’s 7-nanometer (7nm) chip production process, as per the new reports.

The report, coming from Korean Economic Daily, claims that both the companies — Tesla and Samsung, have discussed chip design multiple times and have also exchanged chip prototypes for the upcoming Hardware 4 self-driving system from Tesla.

Samsung

If Samsung gets the contract from Tesla, then the company is expected to start production using the 7nm process. This is likely to happen as Samsung is already producing Tesla’s current-generation Hardware 3 computers.

Samsung is manufacturing 5nm chips but will be using the 7nm process to manufacture chips for Tesla’s Hardware 4 self-driving computer to ensure higher production yields and stable functions of the chip when installed.

While the timeline for the production of the Hardware 4 is not yet known, but we expect it to get started in a couple of months given that Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed during the AI Day event last month that the new hardware for its self-driving technology for the Cybertruck will be released in about a year or so.

Samsung is currently the second-largest contract chip manufacturer in the world, just behind TSMC. While Samsung holds 17.3 percent of the market share, Taiwan-based TSMC is miles ahead with a massive 52.9 percent market share.

In the past few years, the South Korean giant has picked up pace when it comes to chip manufacturing and is trying to catch up with TSMC. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 chipset is being manufactured by Samsung and the company is also opening its doors to other companies and other types or non-smartphone chips.

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