Home > Business > Industry

Samsung's new foundry leader acknowledges that company is 'behind'

Published: 09 Dec. 2024, 18:58 Updated: 10 Dec. 2024, 16:41

JIN EUN-SOO
[email protected]

Han Jin-man

Han Jin-man, the newly appointed leader of Samsung Electronics' contract chip manufacturing business, admitted that the company's 2-nanometer chips had produced lower-than-expected yield in his first message to employees since taking on the post.

“I will focus on improving the yield of the 2-nanometer manufacturing process,” Han said.

“We have achieved the transition to gate-all-around [GAA] technology faster than anybody else, but we have many shortcomings to making it into a tangible business. We should cut out the vicious cycle of having to put our stake on the next nodes after the window of opportunity closes.”

GAA is an advanced transistor architecture that's expected to significantly improve performance and energy efficiency. It was first adapted by Samsung Electronics for its 3-nanometer nodes while its rival and market leader, TSMC, said it would deploy it starting with its 2-nanometer nodes.

Samsung Electronics has been grappling with yield issues in the contract manufacturing of advanced chips since its 3-nanometer nodes. While TSMC is known to have achieved a yield of more than 70 percent for the process, securing major clients like Apple and Nvidia, Samsung has had its limit expanding its client pool.

To make matters worse, TSMC made official Monday that it would start mass-producing 2-nanometer nodes starting in the first half of next year, with Apple expected to be its first client, according to a Taiwanese state-run media outlet.

“We have to admit that our technology falls behind other big manufacturers,” Han said in the message.

“We will not be able to catch up in foundry in the short term, but let's find our technology competitiveness so that our sales and technology support teams in the field can proudly provide our foundry services.”

Han requested that team leaders make sure that their team members don't waste time on useless tasks like reporting to senior employees so that engineers can spend their time on experiments and contemplating.

BY JIN EUN-SOO [[email protected]]