Samsung's foundry business needs big clients that can provide orders worth tens of billions of dollars. Unfortunately, most companies that fit the bill are opting for TSMC's 5nm process, which is widely perceived as being superior to Samsung's 5nm process.
The company doesn't want a repeat of this, which is why it has been working so hard to establish superiority over TSMC for the next-gen 3nm process. As the leading supplier of GPUs, orders from NVIDIA mean big business for any foundry, and Samsung is reportedly trying desperately hard to win orders from NVIDIA.
NVIDIA's business will be a big win for Samsung Foundry
NVIDIA has stuck with TSMC's process nodes to develop its GPUs for a while now. The recent GeForce RTX 40 series is made on TSMC's 5nm process. Samsung wants to change that as the industry transitions towards 3nm chips.
Samsung's 3nm process node uses Gate-All-Around technology. The company has worked hard on improving and optimizing the process to elimate problems that have forced it in TSMC's shadow for far too long.
A new report out of South Korea also claims that Samsung has implemented an internal strategy called “Nemo,” with every department being told to make diligent efforts for winning orders from NVIDIA. Samsung last produced NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 30 GPUs on its 8nm process, so it's been a while.
NVIDIA has had a close relationship with Samsung in the past and the two are also in sync for high-bandwidth memory solutions used in NVIDIA's AI chips. Samsung was even rumored to be NVIDIA's sole supplier of HBM3E chips at one point.
If Samsung is able to sort things out for its 3nm process in time, and provide enough of a cost advantage, it would make clear business sense for NVIDIA to shift over orders from TSMC. Samsung has to create that enabling environment for NVIDIA to make that move. The company will certainly be hoping that it ends up doing that.
