Samsung Electronics’ chip contract manufacturing business announced it plans to more than triple its advanced chips production capacity by 2027 to meet strong demand.
Samsung, the world’s second-largest foundry after Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC), is targeting production of advanced 2-nanometre technology chips by 2025 and 1.4-nanometre chips by 2027, set for use in applications such as high-performance computing and artificial intelligence.
“There has been some progress (in raising prices) this year, and costs are being reflected. New orders won currently will be made after 2-3 years, so the direct impact of the current atmosphere will be minimal,” said Moonsoo Kang, executive vice president of Samsung Electronics’ foundry business.
Samsung began producing chips with 3-nanometre technology in June. The company was in talks with potential customers for 3-nanometre collaboration, including Qualcomm, Tesla and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Samsung said.
Samsung will be enhancing gate-all-around (GAA) based technology and plans to introduce the 2nm process in 2025 and 1.4nm process in 2027.
Samsung is accelerating the development of 2.5D/3D heterogeneous integration packaging technology to provide a total system solution in foundry services.
Its 3D packaging X-Cube with micro-bump interconnection will be ready for mass production in 2024, and bump-less X-Cube will be available in 2026.
Samsung, the world’s largest memory chip maker, has had difficulties in meeting clients’ expectations for foundry yields in recent years. Analysts said the company had pushed advanced technology too quickly to compete with TSMC, but had suffered from having less experience with the long-term client cooperation needed in contract manufacturing, Reuters news report said.
Samsung co-CEO Kyung Kye-hyun told reporters its foundry business had lagged TSMC’s development schedule and performance in 5- and 4-nanometre chips, but customers were interested in the second version of 3-nanometre chips to be made from 2024.
Kang said that demand for advanced 5-nanometre and finer chips is rapidly increasing despite current inflationary pressures due to long-term expansion of high-performance computing, artificial intelligence, 5G and 6G connectivity and automotive applications.
The limited number of advanced chipmaking machines that can be produced by Dutch company ASML limits how much advanced chip capacity can be added, Kang added.
Samsung is currently building chip production in Taylor, Texas for operations starting in 2024.
