Samsung may aim to persuade Biden to let American companies place orders for its 3-nm GAA process. It is reported that US President Biden will arrive in Seoul for a three-day visit. According to Yonhap, the visit will include visiting Samsung's pingze factory, which is also the world's largest chip foundry factory, located about 70 kilometers south of Seoul. In addition to Biden, it is said that Samsung vice chairman Li Zairong will also accompany him to show the next generation of large-scale production process.
Over the past few months, it has been reported that Samsung will begin mass production of its 3-nm gate all around (GAA) technology, surpassing its 4-nm node, which is used for mass production of Qualcomm's Xiaolong 8 generation. Samsung will show Biden a 3-nanometer chip to emphasize that its OEM capacity exceeds Taiwan's TSMC.
Compared with Samsung's nano-a process, the company's performance can be reduced by up to 35% and nano-a can save up to 35% of the power at the same time. This 3-nm GAA process is likely to deal with the 3-nm nodes of TSMC. For a long time, this Taiwanese manufacturer has been the leading manufacturer in the global OEM market.
According to the statistics proposed by trendforce, TSMC accounted for 52.1% of the global OEM market in the fourth quarter of 2021, while Samsung, which ranked second, only had a market share of 18.3% in the same period, seriously lagging behind. A previous report mentioned that the Korean manufacturer was in trouble with its 3-nm GAA process because it was said that the yield was worse than its 4-nm technology.
If Samsung cannot improve these yield rates and prove that its 3-nm GAA process can be comparable to TSMC's 3-nm wafer, it may not be able to obtain orders from Qualcomm and other companies. Samsung is expected to put its advanced chip technology into large-scale production soon, so we will see its performance in the competition with TSMC.