According to InfoStockDaily (via Wccftech), Samsung is currently investigating the possibility of fraud in its foundry business. Certain Samsung Foundry executives are being accused of fabricating the yield rate of 4nm and 5nm processes to create a false impression that all’s well at Samsung’s chipmaking arm.

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Yield rate or die yield is the number of working chips on a wafer and is expressed as a percentage since the number of chips can vary depending on chip and wafer sizes. For Samsung, this reportedly stood at a very poor 35% compared to TSMC’s 70%, and is being touted as the main reason for Qualcomm’s switching of sides.

This makes it possible that Qualcomm’s next-gen 3nm processor will be manufactured by TSMC alone, as opposed to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, orders of which were split between Samsung and TSMC.

Reports of poor yields and missing funds from Samsung come at a very poor time, since it and TSMC are currently the only chipmakers in the world capable of producing >5nm chips. The two are painstakingly working to gain the upper hand in manufacturing 3nm chips, but a key customer like Qualcomm getting behind TSMC could indicate Sammy is already losing the race.

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