Samsung wafer foundry goal: surpass TSMC in 2030

In the past year, Samsung has made high-profile semiconductor expansion plans, saying that it will invest $151.5 billion in fab construction over the next decade, as well as mass production of the 3nm GAA process in the first half of 2022, and the second-generation 3nm process will be mass-produced in 2023. By increasing production capacity, we will accelerate the development of process technologies to narrow the distance with the leader, TSMC.

Samsung's unremitting efforts have also achieved preliminary results, and recently there have been reports that the number of Samsung wafer foundry customers has exceeded 100. However, Samsung's goal is to reach more than 300 customers by 2026, and obviously there is still a long way to go. With the increase in demand in the wafer foundry market in 2022, Samsung hopes to blossom more and enter a period of full growth.

Samsung's expansion is not limited to South Korea, but also to the U.S. market, and last year it announced a $17 billion investment in Texas to build a new fab. DigiTimes said Samsung's goal is to surpass TSMC by 2030.

Despite its ambitions, unfortunately, Samsung, which has just set sail, has suffered a blow. It is rumored that Samsung's mass-produced 4nm process yield rate is low, so that large customer Qualcomm has the intention of transferring orders to TSMC, and Nvidia is likely to transfer orders for the next generation of GPUs to TSMC. In addition to increasing production capacity, the development of semiconductor processes is also crucial. Samsung pinned its hopes on the 3nm process node, which is said to have a 35% performance improvement and a 50% reduction in power consumption compared to the 7nm LPP process.

Samsung has a wealth of experience and technology in the semiconductor industry, as well as huge financial support, but in the journey of wafer foundry business, it seems to have encountered many obstacles.