Chip war heats up as Samsung claims it can beat TSMC within 5 years

pcgamer.com:

Samsung thinks it can surpass TSMC's world-beating microchip fabrication tech within five years. So says Kyung Kye-hyun(opens in new tab), president and head of Samsung’s semiconductor business.

Intel has made similar claims recently, confirming that everyone in the chip production game has its sights on industry leader TSMC.

Kyung Kye-hyun has, however, conceded that Samsung is currently well off the pace. «To be honest, our foundry technology is one or two years behind TSMC's,» he admits. But he thinks Samsung already has the advantage as the industry moves towards 2nm tech.

Primarily, that's because Samsung has already made the move to so-called gate-all-around (GAA) transistors for its current 3nm node, widely seen as a key enabling technology for advanced process nodes.

Samsung claims its GAA 3nm tech delivers 30% more performance, 50% lower power consumption and a 45% reduction in chip area compared to its previous node.

TSMC, for its part, has retained older FinFET transistor designs in its new 3nm node (opens in new tab)and will only move to GAA transistors when it makes the jump to 2nm. Samsung thinks it has the advantage when it comes to implementing GAA transistors, hence the opportunity to overtake TSMC.

The slight snag here is that Samsung's narrative isn't entirely consistent. On the one hand Samsung seems to recognise that node names like «3nm» are as much branding as they are reflective of the physical characteristics of transistors.

That's why Samsung can claim it beat TSMC to «3nm» but still concedes it is a few years behind TSMC. In short, Samsung's 3nm is not like TSMC's 3nm. Most industry analysts reckon that Samsung's 3nm tech is, at best, comparable with TSMC's older 5nm node.

That all adds up