Moore’s Law, the observation made by Intel co-founder and former CEO Gordon Moore that calls for the number of transistors in a chip to double every year (later revised to every other year) is barely alive. But that is no surprise since, at the current 3nm process node, we are talking about stuffing billions and billions of transistors inside each chip. Doubling the number of transistors, at this stage, is a very hard feat to accomplish.
Samsung Foundry releases its roadmap revealing the production of 1.4nm chips in 2027
Samsung releases a roadmap for its foundry business which includes using a 1.4nm process node in 2027
Samsung Foundry is considered the second largest foundry in the world after TSMC. The latter counts Apple, MediaTek, AMD, Qualcomm, and other big tech names as its customers. Samsung’s global market share of 17.3% is second only to the 52.9% of the market owned by TSMC, according to data from TrendForce. Samsung is hoping to close the gap between it and TSMC.
SK Kim, an analyst at Daiwa Capital Markets, told CNBC that “This is the first time that SEC (Samsung Electronics) guides for its long-term foundry roadmap and I think it is more aggressive than TSMC and market expectations.” Part of Samsung’s plan to top TSMC calls for it to triple the production capacity for its most advanced chips between now and 2027.
TSMC is in the process of building Fab 21 in Phoenix, Arizona with production expected to begin early in 2024. The factory will start with a capacity of 20,000 wafer starts per month using TSMC’s N5 (5nm) process node.
Samsung seeks to triple the production of its most advanced chips by 2027
The last few years have seen the chip industry beset by shortages due to the pandemic and surprising demand for chips from automotive manufacturers. Even a company as big as Apple, which wields a large influence over production schedules at TSMC, reportedly lost $6 billion in revenue last year due to the chip shortage. For its 2021 fiscal year, Apple took in $365.82 billion in revenue.
Dr. Si-young Choi, president and head of Foundry Business at Samsung Electronics, said today, “The technology development goal down to 1.4nm and foundry platforms specialized for each application, together with stable supply through consistent investment are all part of Samsung’s strategies to secure customers’ trust and support their success. Realizing every customer’s innovations with our partners has been at the core of our foundry service.”
