Seoul: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd said on Thursday it has begun mass production of chips with advanced 3-nanometer technology, a first to do so globally, as it competes with a far larger rival in contract chip manufacturing. TSMC seeks new customers to capture.
Compared to traditional 5-nanometer chips, the newly developed first-gen 3-nanometer process can reduce power consumption by up to 45%, improve performance by up to 23% and reduce the area to 16 percent, Samsung said in a statement. % can be reduced.
The South Korean firm did not name customers for its latest foundry technology, which supplies made-to-order chips such as mobile processors and high-performance computing chips, and analysts said Samsung and Chinese companies were among the early customers. is expected to be.
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Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is the world’s most advanced foundry chipmaker and controls about 54% of the global market for contract production of chips, which are used by firms such as Apple and Qualcomm, which do not have their own semiconductor facilities. .
Samsung, second with 16.3% market share, announced a 171 trillion won ($132 billion) investment plan last year to overtake TSMC as the world’s top logic chipmaker by 2030, according to data provider Trendforce.
“We will continue to actively innovate in competitive technology development,” said Seong Choi, head of foundry. Business on Samsung.
Samsung co-CEO Kyung Kae-hyun said earlier this year that its foundry business would seek new customers in China, where it expects higher market growth, as companies ranging from automakers to appliance accessories makers continue to grow global chip. To overcome the shortage, run for safe capacity.
While Samsung is the first to produce with 3-nanometer chip production, TSMC is planning 2-nanometer volume production in 2025.
Samsung is the market leader in memory chips, but has been overtaken by frontrunner TSMC in the more diversified foundry business, which has made it harder to compete, analysts said.
“Non-memory is different, there’s a lot of diversity,” said analyst Kim Yang-jae at Daol Investment & Securities.
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“There are only two types of memory chips – DRAM and NAND flash. You can focus on one thing, increase efficiency, and build a lot more, but you can do that with a thousand different non-memory chips.” can not do.”
According to Mirae Asset Securities, Samsung’s compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of capital expenditures between 2017 and 2023, which measures how fast the company is growing its investments, is estimated at 7.9%, compared to TSMC’s estimated 30.4%.
Analysts said Samsung’s efforts to compete with the industry leader have also been hampered by lower-than-expected yields of older chips over the past year or so. The company said in March that its operations have shown gradual improvement.
($1 = 1,292.8900 won)
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