On June 13th, Samsung Electronics announced the progress of many chip technologies in the future at the "Samsung OEM Forum in 2024", and said that its OEM business plans to provide customers with one-stop services, and integrate its number one storage chip, OEM and chip packaging services in the world, so as to produce artificial intelligence chips faster and take advantage of the artificial intelligence boom.
Samsung said that customers only need one communication channel to dispatch Samsung’s memory chip, wafer manufacturing and packaging teams at the same time. Compared with the existing technology, the time from research and development to production is expected to be shortened by 20%.
Siyoung Choi, president and general manager of Samsung Wafer Manufacturing, said: "We really live in the AI ? ? era-the advent of generative AI is completely changing the technological landscape."
Samsung has launched fierce competition with TSMC in the field of chip foundry, hoping to catch up in the field of AI foundry. Samsung introduced an advanced process called BSPDN, and moved the power interconnection to the back of the chip. This technology improves power, performance and area, and can be used for AI chips and high-performance computing. Compared with the first generation of 2 nm process, the voltage is significantly reduced, and the mass production time is in 2027. Korean media pointed out that there is no precedent for commercialization in the world.
Samsung also promotes the architecture of all-around gate transistor (GAA). As the chip becomes more and more refined and even breaks through the physical limit, GAA is regarded as an important factor to continue to manufacture more powerful chips for AI. Competitors such as TSMC are also developing GAA chips, but Samsung started earlier and said it plans to mass-produce the second-generation 3-nanometer chips using GAA in the second half of this year.
According to Samsung Electronics, the 1.4-nanometer chip technology is progressing smoothly. From the perspective of efficiency and production yield, it is expected to be mass-produced as scheduled in 2027.
Samsung predicts that the global chip industry revenue will increase to 778 billion US dollars by 2028, driven by AI chips.
Marco Chisari, executive vice president of wafer manufacturing and marketing of Samsung, said that Samsung believes that OpenAI CEO Altman’s rough forecast of the surge in demand for AI chips is true. Earlier, foreign media reported that Altman had told TSMC executives that he hoped to build about 30 new fabs. Samsung Electronics predicts that by 2028, the list of AI-related customers will increase fivefold and revenue will increase ninefold.
According to Jibang’s estimation, Samsung Electronics’ market share in wafer manufacturing fell to 11% in the first quarter of this year from 11.3% in the previous quarter, while TSMC increased from 61.2% to 61.7% in the same period.
It is worth noting that TSMC, the main competitor of Samsung Electronics, is gaining momentum. Huang Renxun, CEO of NVIDIA, has agreed that TSMC should raise prices. Barclays analysts are optimistic that the upcoming mass production of 2 nm applications will be faster than expected. Barclays believes that the leading position of semiconductor applications has shifted from smart phones to data centers. "The demand for 2 nanometers is strong, which is a big advantage for TSMC." Barclays raised the target share price of TSMC ADR from US$ 150 to 170 yuan, maintaining the "overweight" rating.