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Samsung reports success in building high-end SoCs again

Samsung has denied rumors, which have been fueled time and again, that the Korean electronics giant’s semiconductor division has huge difficulties in increasing its yield in the production of chips with a small structural width. You are on the right track. As Samsung explained when it released its latest corporate figures last week, production yields of processors with a structure width of five nanometers or less are currently “stabilizing”. Meanwhile, the 5-nanometer production has reached a “mature” level, according to representatives of Samsung, without giving concrete figures.

The company admitted that production in processes with a structure width of four nanometers “incurred some delays during the initial start-up process”. This means that the yield of the smaller chips could not be increased as quickly as hoped. It typically takes time to achieve a high level of defect-free chips when transitioning to a new manufacturing process.

3nm development delayed, but back on track

While working on its new gate-all-around process for chips with a structural width of just 3 nanometers, the initial problems have now been overcome and work is underway again to increase yields, the company says. Each step of the development will be examined in detail, with hopes of shortening the start-up phase, it said. Samsung plans to begin large-scale production of its first 3-nanometer chips later this year, making it the first manufacturer to mass-produce even smaller chips.

Main competitor TSMC had recently hinted at minor delays in working on 3nm chips. Samsung has been losing customers to TSMC for some time because the yield from the production of state-of-the-art chips does not reach the usual level. Qualcomm has already ordered a new variant of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 from TSMC, while AMD, Nvidia, and several other customers have also secured large capacity quotas from TSMC, reducing their share of Samsung-produced chips.