The battle for 3nm is in full swing. Who will win between the two foundry giants TSMC and Samsung?

Statistics show that Samsung's monthly wafer production capacity in 2020 was approximately 25,000 wafers, while TSMC's was 140,000 wafers. Especially in terms of the current cutting-edge 5nm process, Samsung's monthly wafer production capacity was approximately 5,000 wafers, while TSMC's was approximately 90,000 wafers.

At the latest briefing, TSMC stated that due to strong demand for 5nm, the company's 5nm series capacity expansion plan in 2021 will double that of 2020, will increase by more than 3.5 times in 2022 compared to 2020, and will reach more than four times that of 2020 in 2023.

According to reports from Korean media citing multiple suppliers, Samsung has been slow to improve the yield of its 5nm products, putting it in a passive position in building 5nm production lines and competing for customers.

Customer Orders

Recently, there have been frequent reports about TSMC and Samsung's first 3nm customers. According to reports, Apple has become one of TSMC's first customers of the 3nm process, and has pre-contracted the initial production capacity of TSMC's 3nm process. At the same time, Intel will also use TSMC's 3nm process to produce graphics chips and server processors.

AMD, a major processor manufacturer, may become the first 3nm process customer of Samsung's foundry business because its partner TSMC has a close relationship with Apple, which makes AMD consider choosing Samsung to deliver 3nm process orders. In addition to AMD, Qualcomm is also interested in Samsung's 3nm process.

At present, the list of 3nm customers of the two companies has not been officially announced. But from the perspective of existing customers, TSMC's customers almost cover the world's top semiconductor giants, including Apple, AMD, Qualcomm, Marvel, MediaTek, Nvidia, etc. are all its major customers.

Figure: TSMC customer revenue share, data source: The Information Network

In the past, Samsung's foundry service has been stuck in the inability to effectively expand its customer base. Apart from orders from its own Samsung Electronics, it has received very few external orders. In recent years, Samsung has successively won major customers such as Google and Cisco, Qualcomm and Nvidia. If Samsung can really lead TSMC in 3nm, it is expected to attract more customers.

Conclusion: The latest data from TrendForce shows that TSMC currently has a market share of nearly 52.9%, making it the world's largest chip foundry company, while Samsung ranks second with a market share of 17.3%. The gap between Samsung and TSMC is still obvious. Can Samsung win this turnaround battle with 3nm? Perhaps we will know the answer next year.