Competition is intensifying between Korea’s Samsung Electronics and Taiwan’s TSMC to secure foundry customers.
According to overseas media, major foundry customers such as Qualcomm, Nvidia and Tesla are working to reduce their dependence on a certain foundry partner.
In this regard, PhoneArena, an American computer media, recently announced that Qualcomm will place orders for the production of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 from TSMC and Samsung Electronics. He predicts that the new chip will be produced in a 4nm process and will have two versions – a standard version and a custom version with improved performance. Samsung Electronics will be responsible for producing the customized version.
Previously, Qualcomm partnered with Samsung for the production of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. But it has partnered with TSMC for the production of the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 announced in May this year. Industry insiders believe that Qualcomm’s decision to outsource some Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 production to Samsung suggests that the Korean company has, to some extent, earned Qualcomm’s trust in its cutting-edge process.
Samsung Electronics lost its smelter customers to TSMC due to concerns over yields of its 4nm and 5nm processes. Nvidia, a big customer of Samsung Electronics, has partnered with TSMC for the production of the RTX40 series, the next-generation graphics processing unit (GPU) unveiled in September. Recently, Taiwanese media reported that Tesla asked TSMC to manufacture semiconductors for the next generation self-drive (FSD).
However, Samsung Electronics managed to mass-produce 3nm chips before TSMC in the first half of this year and increased the yields of its 4nm and 5nm processes, thus ensuring its competitiveness. Samsung expects an increase in 3nm process orders to create more opportunities for it.
