Samsung’s 3nm GAA Yield Rate Is Said To Be Up To 70 Percent, Enabling A Comeback Of The Foundry For Cutting-Edge Chips

wccftech.com:

Samsung provided an update on its 3nm GAA chip progress during its quarterly earnings for the year, indicating a positive outlook that could potentially enable the Korean giant to bring back its lost customers. According to a new report, the yields of its next-generation chips are between 60-70 percent, which is quite impressive, given that at one point, the company struggled with its 4nm process. This was one of the reasons Qualcomm jumped ship to TSMC for the Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 and Snapdragon 8 Gen 2.

A high yield of up to 70 percent is crucial for Samsung to build confidence amongst potential clients, and as FNN states, the company appears to be making progress with this technology. In fact, the manufacturer reportedly sent out a 3nm GAA prototype to various customers in order to validate its quality, but the names of these firms were not provided.

Regardless, it has been stated that the majority of Samsung’s customers hail from the mobile and HPC (high-performance computing) industries that require chips focused on low power consumption and increased performance.

During a time when TSMC is unable to meet demand for Apple’s A17 Bionic and M3 chips on its 3nm process, this should be considered a small victory for Samsung, but it is highly doubtful that Apple would ditch its current foundry partner.

However, other companies like Qualcomm and MediaTek could adopt a dual-sourcing business strategy where it acquires 3nm GAA chips from Samsung and TSMC’s own technology to command better pricing for their wafers.

At this time, TSMC’s 3nm wafers are rumored to cost $20,000, making it a costly decision for Android SoC makers, though it has been reported that Qualcomm intends to jump to the more advanced N3E process for its