This is becoming a titanic struggle for engineering supremacy at 2nm.
In the realm of semiconductor manufacturing, Samsung leads by technicality—it shares the same most advanced node, 3nm, with TSMC—but it is the only company producing gate-all-around (GAA) transistors, putting it one generation ahead of TSMC and Intel, which continue to use FinFET. It is difficult to predict how the competition for 3nm market share will play out among the participating companies, but the front lines are already shifting to the next generation 2nm process, where Samsung may attempt to wrest market share from TSMC by offering discounted wafers, but it is still having trouble with yields on its GAA wafers, which could provide TSMC or Intel with a significant advantage when obtaining orders from the usual suspects.
A recent report from Trendforce lays out the broad contours of the impending battle for market share at 2nm, which is expected to take place around 2025. Based on its current dominance, TSMC is expected to emerge victorious at 2nm, and Samsung may raise its prices to entice companies such as Nvidia back into the fold. As for the battle between Samsung, TSMC, and Intel, it is described as a titanic struggle for market share that will be exacerbated by the rising demand for AI chips.
When AMD switched from Ampere to Ada Lovelace, it infamously lost the AI giant’s business to TSMC, and all indications point to the company continuing to use TSMC’s 3nm process for its next Blackwell GPUs.
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For its upcoming Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 chips, Qualcomm has reportedly chosen to use TSMC’s 3nm process, as reported by Wccftech. Previously, it was reported that Qualcomm looked at Samsung’s state-of-the-art 3nm GAA process, but was put off by its yield problems, which remained at 50% a year after production started. Qualcomm reportedly needed Samsung to increase that figure to 70%, so it decided to look elsewhere.According to the report, Samsung needs to increase its yields in order to instill confidence in firms over its current and future nodes, despite having a significant advantage over its competitors due to being the first to use a GAA process.
While TSMC produced 5nm chips in 2020, Intel is anticipated to launch data center products in early 2024 using a 5nm node called Intel 3. Intel is also involved in this battle, but it still lags behind its competitors in advanced nodes. Intel intends to launch its own 2nm process in 2024 with Arrow Lake, which uses its 20A process, which is its first GAA design. If that launches in 2024, it will give Intel a year’s head start on the competition because both TSMC and Samsung are not expected to enter the 2nm arena until 2025.