Text/Ball Review/Zi Yang Proofreader/ZhiQiu
In the field of global chip foundry, Samsung has been trying to catch up with TSMC, kung fu pays off, in terms of chip foundry technology, Samsung has caught up with the pace of TSMC, all of which have reached 4nm nodes.
However, in terms of market share, Samsung still has a big gap with TSMC, according to the report released by the research institute Qunzhi Consulting, in the third quarter of 2021, TSMC occupied 53.1% of the market share, while Samsung only won 17.1% of the market, the gap between them is not a star and a half.
Samsung that doesn't concede defeat
In the face of a monopoly of TSMC, Samsung does not intend to concede defeat, but wants to use the global lack of cores to fight a "counterattack war", in this regard, Samsung has carried out a series of layouts in the semiconductor business.
According to the author's understanding, Samsung mainly exerts its strength from the two aspects of production capacity and technology.
Specifically, first of all, in terms of production capacity. You know, production capacity is extremely important for chip manufacturers, because having enough production capacity to meet the needs of large customers can also attract more chip orders.
To this end, Samsung also officially announced the establishment of a chip production base in Texas, the United States, with a total investment of 17 billion US dollars, according to Samsung's plan, it is expected that by 2024, the plant will be put into use.
Secondly, in terms of technology. Although Samsung has caught up with TSMC in terms of foundry technology, the industry generally believes that advanced process technology represents the status of the industry and technical capabilities, in other words, as long as Samsung surpasses TSMC in terms of technology, it can lay its position as the hegemon of the industry.
In terms of 3nm process, Samsung plans to mass-produce in the first half of 2022, and uses a new generation of GAA technology, in contrast, TSMC, in the 3nm process node is still using FinFET technology, it is reasonable to say that the Samsung 3nm using new technology must be stronger than TSMC 3nm.
And, according to Samsung's plan, the planning of 3nm process technology can be divided into 2 stages, simply put, the first generation of 3nm uses the first generation of GAA technology, and the second generation of 3nm will use the upgraded version of GAA technology.
From the above point of view, Samsung in order to surpass TSMC can be described as a comprehensive force, but is it really so easy for Samsung to surpass TSMC?
In the author's view, Samsung's strategy of fully developing production capacity and technology is not wrong, but it does not recognize its main shortcomings. Taking the 5nm node as an example, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 of Samsung OEM has obviously overheated, which is completely lost to the A14 processor of TSMC 5nm OEM.
It can be seen that Samsung has some defects in the process technology, if the problem continues to the 3nm node, even if Samsung uses advanced GAA technology, it is still difficult to achieve TSMC surpass.
Therefore, while developing technology and production capacity, Samsung should also pay attention to issues such as technological maturity and yield.
TSMC is moving forward steadily
It is worth mentioning that while Samsung is making full efforts, TSMC is also steadily moving forward, for example, in terms of expanding production capacity, TSMC has successively announced the establishment of wafer foundries in the United States, Japan and Germany to comprehensively improve the production capacity of related processes.
Moreover, TSMC also announced that it will officially mass-produce 3nm in the second half of 2022, at which time, many customers will frantically grab TSMC's 3nm production capacity.
Obviously, TSMC does not want to give Samsung the opportunity to surpass and continuously improve its competitiveness in the field of chip foundry.
The most critical thing is that in terms of customer base, TSMC has more advantages than Samsung. According to the author's understanding, chip giants such as Apple, Qualcomm, MediaTek, Intel and AMD are the main customers of TSMC.
In contrast, Samsung's customer base is much smaller, aside from self-production and self-sales, Qualcomm is barely a big customer of Samsung.
Write to the end
Although Samsung has been trying to catch up with TSMC, in the author's opinion, it is unlikely to surpass TSMC in the short term, after all, the gap in all aspects is extremely obvious.
So, do you think Samsung has a chance to surpass TSMC?