Text/Ball Review/Zi Yang Correction/Zhi Qiu
The competition between TSMC and Samsung is also becoming more and more fierce, and at present, both sides are entering the 4nm process node at the same time and beginning to help their respective customers complete the foundry task of 4nm chips.
In fact, from the perspective of process technology, Samsung's strength has kept pace with TSMC, and if it makes up for customer resources, it is not impossible to surpass TSMC.
TSMC has a backhand
However, as the world's largest chip foundry, TSMC will naturally "leave a back hand" in the face of Samsung's catch-up. On December 16, TSMC announced a new process technology, named N4X process.
According to TSMC's naming rules, the N4X process should belong to the 4nm category, but in fact, the TSMC N4X belongs to the re-upgraded version of the 5nm chip technology, which belongs to the third generation of 5nm process technology.
So, what are the improvements in TSMC's N4X process process?
In fact, the N4X process process is based on the 5nm mass production experience, further technical enhancements, which means that the shortcomings on the previous 5nm may be made up for in the N4X process process, in other words, the N4X process process will be the best 5nm version of the process technology.
According to TSMC, the N4X process process compared to N5, in terms of performance increased by 15%, compared to N4P, in the 1.2V working environment, the performance improvement is only about 4%, in general, the performance improvement is not particularly large.
Exclusive custom manufacturing technology
It is worth mentioning that unlike the traditional 5nm and 4nm, the new N4X process process is ADX's manufacturing technology customized for the mass production of high-performance computing products.
Obviously, the application positioning of the N4X process process is very clear, such as cloud computing chips, AI chips and Internet of Things chips, etc., which can be produced using this technology.
Not only that, in order to better serve specific user groups, TSMC has also optimized the N4X process to adapt to the characteristics of high-performance computing products, such as in order to adapt to the large current flow and high frequency of high-performance computing products, the device design and structure of the N4X process process have been optimized in an all-round way, and at the same time, the back-end metal stack optimization has also been optimized.
Thanks to the many advantages of the N4X process process, it is bound to attract more specific customers to choose to cooperate with TSMC, and in theory, AMD, Intel, IBM, Alibaba and Amazon are likely to deepen cooperation with TSMC.
There is no doubt that the N4X process process not only makes TSMC's foundry business more diversified, but also further increases the revenue of the foundry business.
In contrast, according to the author's understanding, Samsung's chip process technology does not seem to extend to high-performance computing products, which means that Samsung has once again been left behind by TSMC.
However, Samsung is not without opportunities to make up, because TSMC's N4X process is expected to enter the trial production phase in the first half of 2023.
Write to the end
From the above point of view, TSMC's layout in the field of chip manufacturing is still more perfect than Samsung, if Samsung does not respond in time, it is conceivable that in the future it will inevitably be thrown farther by TSMC, and then it will be more difficult to surpass TSMC than to ascend to the sky.