Samsung Foundry's 4nm process yield appears to be improving every quarter. According to industry sources, Samsung's yield is good enough to attract new Qualcomm and NVIDIA chip orders. This shift in manufacturing may help Samsung close the gap with its chipset rival TSMC.
At the beginning of May, industry insiders were saying that Samsung's 4nm yield reached levels similar to TSMC's. However, now, Samsung reportedly has a semiconductor yield of over 75%.
Furthermore, experts say that Samsung Foundry's 4nm chip manufacturing defect rate will drop below 25% before the end of the year. At the same time, the company will decrease its chip defect rate below 40% for chips manufactured on its 3nm process.
Samsung went for higher quality over quantity
Interestingly, reports say that the chip market's downturn and Samsung having fewer orders than usual allowed the company to increase its chip manufacturing efficiency. Having fewer orders permitted Samsung's engineers to refine the 4nm manufacturing technology and improve the yield.
Industry watchers believe Samsung Foundry could get more 4nm-and-lower orders from key clients because of this increase in quality and yield rate. Hi Investment & Securities (via Tech News Space) says “There is a possibility that Qualcomm and NVIDIA will again outsource chip production to Samsung Foundry.”
Previously, there were reports that Samsung could gain more orders from AMD and Google on the back of 4nm chip manufacturing improvements. But as far as 3nm chips go, more recent rumors say that TSMC will manufacture the Google Tensor G5 chip on its 3nm process, not Samsung Foundry.
