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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Samsung has been working on perfecting its advanced 3nm process technology and it seems like that production yield results for its most cutting edge chip fabrication line has almost been perfected.

Back in 2022, the South Korean tech giant was the first to kick off mass production of 3nm chips. Around this period, the company’s rate of production yield was in the range of 10 percent. Now, it appears that the first generation of 3nm process nodes have reached a “perfect” level of production yield, as per a source close to the matter. The report also claimed that the Samsung Foundry had begun taking orders from fabless clients to begin mass production of its most advanced chips earlier this week.

According to the source, “We are now developing second-generation 3nm chips without delay.” For those unaware, the production yield is basically how many chips remain on the wafer and are key to the profitability of the semiconductor process node. Notably, the 3nm process technology is all the first process node where Samsung applied its first generation GAA structure transistors. Simply put, it is a method on improving the chip performance and energy efficiency.

On the other hand, the world’s largest contract chipmaker TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) employs its FinFET technology for the 3nm process, which entered mass production just last month. But while TSMC was months behind Samsung, the former also has Apple as one of its major customers.

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TSMC was slated to start trial phases of the production for its latest 3nm fabrication process by the end of 2020. However, due to the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic, the semiconductor giant has had to delay its plans until early 2021. This arrives as good news for Samsung as it hopes to catch up to the world’s largest contract chipmaker.

The Coronavirus outbreak has affected the entire world, its various economies, and industries. Supply chains have been disrupted as well, causing shortages as well. Now, the 3nm trial production line, which was expected to be fitted by the end of this year, will only be seen by Q1 of 2021 and mass production starting sometime in 2022. Similarly, Samsung had also announced a delay for its 3nm process’ mass production to 2022, with efforts being placed in the shift from 7nm fabs.

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According to an official TSMC spokesperson, the company is currently focusing on its 7nm and 5nm processes. It has various orders at the moment, with pressures and tight deadlines also being in the way, especially with Huawei in mind. While the delay isn’t by a very large margin, it should offer it’s South Korean rival an ample amount of time to hope and catch up to TSMC’s shift to the 3nm process.

The Taiwanese based semiconductor giant is investing heavily in the 3nm project. Similarly, Samsung has also been working hard on its shift towards 3nm processes, skipping the 5nm entirely while focusing on its current order on the 14nm, 10nm, and even 7nm fabs as well. At the moment, TSMC leads the semiconductor industry with its 5nm process that has clients from across the globe including giants like Apple, HiSilicon, AMD, Qualcomm, and many more.

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After current-generation 7nm process for manufacturing chipsets, TSMC is investing in 5nm fabrication process and majority of the capacity for the same being reserved by Apple for the A14 SoC that will power the iPhone 12 series.

To compete, earlier this year, Samsung reportedly succeeded in making first major development towards the 3nm process as the South Korean giant aims to become the world’s number one semiconductor manufacturer by 2030.

The company was set to start mass production of 3nm chipset from 2021 but it seems that Samsung is now forced to delay the manufacturing launch of the new process till 2022 and the reason is being cited to disruption caused by the coronavirus.

A report coming from DigiTimes mentions that the coronavirus has hampered Samsung’s ability to fulfil the scheduled installation of equipment for the new production lines. It is also said that TSMC’s 3nm volume production is still scheduled to commence in 2022.

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The work of Samsung for the 3nm process is based on the Gate All Around (GAAFET) technology rather than FinFET. It supposedly reduces the total silicon size by 35 percent while using about 50 percent less power. It also allows for the same amount of power consumption and 33 percent performance increase over the 5nm FinFET process.

The GAAFET design differs from the FinFET design in that it is built around having gates around four sides of the channel, which ensures reduced power leakage and thus improved control over the channel — a fundamental step when shrinking the process node.

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Samsung last week held its annual Foundry Forum in the U.S where the company among other things, unveiled its roadmap that takes its chip manufacturing process technology to 7nm Low Power Plus, 5nm Low Power Early and 3nm Gate-All-Around Early/Plus.

According to the details revealed, Samsung will first use an EUV lithography solution on the 7nm LPP process and that should be ready for production during the second half of this year. However, mass production of parts using the new process will start in the first half of 2019. This is the same timeline for Samsung’s rival TSMC to start mass production of parts using its 7nm+ node which will also use the EUV lithography. TSMC will also start risk production of its 5nm node in the first half of 2019. Samsung is expected to produce the next-gen Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 mobile platform which will be powering next year’s Samsung Galaxy S10 using the 7nm process.

Samsung will also commence production of chips based on its 5nm LPE that will provide ultra-low power consumption in 2019. In addition, the 4nm chips will join the fray in 2020. This will be the last of the chips to employ FinFET process and it will be produced using the 4nm Low Power Early/Plus process. Chips built with this process technology will feature improved performance and a smaller cell size.

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The 3nm node will herald an entirely new manufacturing process technology. Samsung will use its own next-generation GAA (Gate all-around) architecture MBCFET (multi-bridge-channel FET). 3nm production is not expected to begin until 2022. Keep in mind that the smaller the node size, chips that are produced using the process are more powerful and energy efficient.
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