With the advanced process after 5nm increasing in terms of cost and yield difficulty by geometric multiples, wafer foundries are caught in multiple dilemmas. Especially in the 4nm field, Samsung Electronics, which has been frustrated, has not only lost Qualcomm, a big customer, but also made difficulties in the progress of the 3nm process. In contrast, TSMC announced that it will mass-produce the N3B process by the end of this year, and there are new attempts to adopt GAAFET (full surround gate transistor) technology on the 2nm process.
For 3D NAND fabs, a 1% yield increase could mean a net profit of $110 million per year, while for a cutting-edge logic fab, a 1% yield increase would mean a net profit of $150 million. Therefore, improving yield is the most urgent problem for Samsung to solve.
There is news that due to the low yield of Samsung's 4nm process, the cost of each Snapdragon 8 Gen1 after flattening is $100, while the cost of the Snapdragon 865 that previously used TSMC's 7nm process was only $81; coupled with the increase in heat generation caused by design problems, Qualcomm quickly made a move to the TSMC camp to produce the subsequent Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Plus.
Obviously, whether it is 5nm or 4nm process OEM, Samsung Electronics is in a disadvantageous position. Therefore, as early as June 2021, it was rumored that Samsung's 3nm process using GAAFET (full surround gate transistor) technology has been successfully tape-out, and it is one step closer to mass production. However, it is one thing for the success of the tape-out film, but the actual mass production is another dimension. According to South Korean media reports, the yield rate of Samsung Electronics' 3nm process is only 10%-20%, which is far less than the company's expected goal, and it is also struggling to improve the yield rate of the 3nm process.
Another wafer foundry giant, TSMC, does not seem to have gone so smoothly in advanced process processes, but it is still much better than Samsung Electronics.
Not only in the 5nm process of Apple A15 and 4nm process Tianji 9000 series SoC yield and calorific reputation is acceptable, but also recently announced that it will mass-produce 3nm process in the second half of this year, and continue to use relatively mature finFET (fin field effect transistor) technology.
Of course, TSMC's 2nm process is under development, which will start pre-production in 2024 and officially put into production in 2025. It is reported that TSMC will use more advanced GAAFET (full surround gate transistor) in the 2nm process.
Finally, TSMC predicts that HPC (high performance computing) will be its fastest growing field this year. HPC accounted for 41% of its revenue last quarter, already slightly higher than the 40% generated by smartphones. It can be seen that if Samsung Electronics cannot find a solution to improve the yield of advanced processes this year, not only will customers be lost, but also affect the follow-up speed of the next new technology.