Samsung plans to invest more than $10 billion to build a new chip factory in Austin, Texas, according to a report from Bloomberg. The Korean company aims to increase its manufacturing capabilities, in order to meet the demands from Qualcomm, Intel, and Tesla, as the existing facility in Texas is not big enough to cope with the increased amount of orders.
Furthermore, the new factory will be able to produce chips as advanced as 3nm in the future, giving Samsung the upper hand in mobile chip fabrication. The move is aiming directly at competitor TSMC. Samsung already claimed some ground After Qualcomm switched back to Samsung Foundry and their new 5LPE process node for the new Snapdragon 888 (the Snapdragon 855 and Snapdragon 865 were both manufactured by TSMC).
Chips manufactured at 3nm will deliver a 35% performance increase, 50% power reduction, and a 45% reduction in total area, compared with 7nm technology, according to Samsung’s own estimation. The company plans to invest a total of $116 billion in the factory over the course of its operation in order to become the biggest player in the chip industry
