Samsung Foundry is not exactly known to be the best chip manufacturer out there. The company has admitted that its current mass production of leading-edge process technologies is not on par with TSMC’s most advanced production nodes. Earlier this year, Samsung vowed to surpass its Taiwanese rival in the next five years, and it seems that change is already taking place. A new report says the Korean company’s 3 nm process yield has surpassed TSMC by a fair margin.
Samsung counter-attacks with 60% yield
Korean publication KMIB claims that Samsung is making notable progress in the yield of its 3nm process. Samsung’s 3nm yield is now reported to be at 60%, while TSMC’s is struggling at 55%. For the unknown, a yield is the percentage of good chips produced from a wafer of silicon. A higher yield means that more chips can be produced from each wafer, lowering the cost of production.
TSMC, which is reported to be manufacturing Apple’s A17 and M3 chips on its 3nm process, is apparently charging the Cupertino company only for good chips that are produced on its process node. This is instead of the standard price of $17,000 per wafer unit. The Taiwanese company is doing this because the yield rate for its 3nm process is still relatively low, reports KMIB.
If Samsung is indeed achieving better yields than TSMC, it might attract some customers that it lost over the past few years. It is being reported that AMD will look towards Samsung’s 3 nm node for some of its upcoming AI and data center parts. TSMC has previously been ahead of Samsung in terms of yield rates. The yield for the Korean company’s 4 nm process was 75%, while TSMC boasted an impressive 80%.
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