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At the beginning of 2024, Samsung 3nm strives for Qualcomm to make a comeback, and the battle with TSMC (2330) is more intense. It is rumored in the industry that Samsung is actively improving the yield of the next-generation 3nm process, and is offering the best to win orders from Qualcomm, in an effort to break the situation that Qualcomm's next-generation 5G flagship chips may be exclusively foundry by TSMC.
*Chain sources revealed that in the face of Samsung's positive overtures, Qualcomm continues to evaluate the new products this year and next year to continue to adopt TSMC and Samsung's dual foundry partner strategy to reduce costs, but it has not been confirmed by Qualcomm.
For the topic of 3nm order competition, TSMC does not comment on a single customer and business.
However, Samsung has hinted at a recent international investor conference that it will not give up the cooperation between the 3nm (SF3 and SF3P) process and non-Apple mobile phone chip manufacturers, and is actively improving the 3nm yield and striving for Qualcomm orders.
It was previously rumored that Qualcomm's next-generation 5G flagship chip Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 is expected to be exclusively operated by TSMC 3nm, but industry sources familiar with Qualcomm's ecology revealed that from the perspective of management costs, Qualcomm has always been willing to choose to adopt the strategy of two wafer foundries.
According to the analysis of the research and research agency Isaiah Research, Qualcomm has always adopted a dual-source strategy in the wafer foundry, aiming to diversify risks and effectively manage the chain.
Regarding the distribution of Qualcomm Snapdragon chip foundry orders in 2024, Isaiah Research believes that whether this year's Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 will be mass-produced in Samsung's 3nm depends on Samsung's 3nm yield status in September 2024.
Since there is still some time before September, Isaiah research believes that if Samsung's 3nm yield improvement is good, it is expected to introduce Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 into the risk production stage in the fourth quarter at the earliest, so the initial production will not be too high, and the volume will be increased as soon as 2025, but it is difficult to say now.
Looking back on the past, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 gen 1 chip was exclusively manufactured by Samsung, and it was later reported that Qualcomm considered the stability and scale of production, and in 2022, the upgraded version of the Snapdragon 8 gen 1 plus was transferred to TSMC exclusively by TSMC, and from this generation of products, it cooperated with TSMC all the way to the subsequent third-generation chip (Snapdragon 8 gen 3), resulting in a special situation in the market that the Qualcomm Snapdragon chips used in Samsung's flagship mobile phones are all produced by TSMC.
The industry expects that if Qualcomm re-introduces dual foundry partners in 2024, the relevant strategy will continue to 2025 to 2026, and it is expected that TSMC and Samsung advanced processes are expected to support Qualcomm at the same time.
Samsung is trying to break the TSMC may be the exclusive foundry of Qualcomm's next-generation 5G flagship chip Snapdragon 8 Gen 4, industry analysis, Samsung in addition to the possibility of offering *** to fight for Qualcomm orders, its biggest advantage is that as the world's largest mobile phone brand, it can provide customers with stable access to the sea, becoming another key bargaining chip to attract Qualcomm orders.
Unlike TSMC's 3nm continuous use of finFET architecture, Samsung took the lead in switching to the wraparound gate (GAA) architecture, although it has a mixed reputation, but there is industry news that more than half of Samsung's 3nm GAA initial production capacity has been used by its own chips, and the initial number of outsourced OEM orders is limited.
Even so, Samsung continues to expand its 3nm process capacity to expand its foundry business. Samsung has previously pointed out that after the company mass-produced the first-generation 3nm SF3E (also known as 3GAE) process in mid-2022, it expects the second-generation 3nm SF3 (3GAP) process to be mass-produced in 2023 and introduced to the market in 2024, and plans to launch an enhanced version of 3GAP+ in 2025, targeting the field of 5G chips and high-speed computing (HPC).
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