Samsung's Taylor plant to make Groq's AI chips on 4nm nodes

Samsung's chip factory in Taylor, Texas under construction [KYUNG KYE-HYUN'S INSTAGRAM ACCOUNT]

Samsung Electronics will manufacture Groq’s AI chips at its Taylor factory in Texas using its improved yield rate of 4-nanometer process nodes.

This is the first time a Taylor chip factory client has been publicly named, amid its arduous attempt to catch up with TSMC in the contract chip manufacturing business.

“[Groq] has contracted with Samsung’s growing Foundry [contract chip manufacturing] business to be its next-gen silicon partner, solidifying Groq’s product roadmap with a U.S.-based foundry services provider,” Groq said in a release Tuesday.

Groq is a Silicon Valley-based AI chip designing startup founded by a group of engineers from Google and has raised $367 million to date.

The Taylor plant is Samsung’s $17 billion chip manufacturing project slated to finish construction within this year and start mass production of 4-nanometer chips by the latter half of next year.

Samsung's chip business head Kyung Kye-hyun said in an Instagram post in July that the Taylor factory will start mass production of 4-nanometer chips by the end of next year for its "U.S. clients who want their core products to be manufactured on their own soil."

The Korean chipmaker has been improving its 4-nanometer process yield rate amid a widening market share gap with TSMC in the contract chip manufacturing business. TSMC made up 59 percent of the global market as of the first quarter this year followed by Samsung with 13 percent, according to Counterpoint Research.

Its 4-nanometer process yield, estimated at 75 percent, has been improved, Hi Investment & Securities analyst Park Sang-woo said in a report last month. That is nearly on par with TSMC's product, whose yield for the 4-nanometer is estimated to be 80 percent.

"The possibility of Qualcomm and Nvidia manufacturing their high-performance chips at Samsung's foundry has increased," Park's report added.

Groq’s next-generation AI chip, which will be manufactured at Samsung's Texan factory, increased its energy efficiency by up to four times compared to the existing ones and is expected to have been upgraded in “throughput, latency, power consumption, hardware footprint and memory capacity,” according to Groq.

"Samsung Foundry is committed to advancing semiconductor technology and bringing groundbreaking AI, HPC and data center solutions to market," Marco Chisari, Samsung's executive vice president who heads its U.S. foundry business, said in a release Tuesday.

"This relationship with Groq is another proof point of how we're using our advanced silicon manufacturing nodes to bring new AI innovation to market."

BY JIN EUN-SOO [jin.eunsoo@joongang.co.kr]