It is rumored that Samsung cuts mature process to support 3nm production

Previously, Samsung Electronics announced that Samsung's second-generation 3nm GAA process will be mass-produced as scheduled in 2024. According to a report from the Korean website Sammobile, Samsung Electronics has a shortage of manpower for 3nm process chips, and there is not enough R&D manpower to maintain 3nm chip production, so it reallocated manpower to support the 3nm production line.

Root reports that Samsung does not currently have enough manpower to maintain enough support for all nodes, and industry observers say the company has reallocated manpower from 130nm and 65nm wafer processes to support 3nm process production. But the price Samsung Electronics paid for it is that it no longer accepts 130nm and 65nm chip orders, which come from small and medium-sized IC design companies in Korea.

As far as competition in the semiconductor field is concerned, Samsung is not the only chipmaker facing manpower shortages. Semiconductor companies in the United States, Taiwan and China are all facing difficulties in hiring more manpower. Sammobile's report believes that TSMC's recent delay in 3nm production may also be due to the same reason. TSMC's U.S. factory construction period has been delayed, and the difficulty of recruiting workers has become the biggest dilemma.

Samsung Electronics said in its fourth-quarter financial report meeting last year: "Compared with the previous technology FinFET process, Samsung's second-generation 3nm GAA process has the advantages of performance and power consumption efficiency, especially design flexibility." Samsung announced the second The next-generation 3nm GAA process will be mass-produced in 2024. Samsung said that the second-generation 3nm GAA process will be added to the MBCFET architecture, reducing the area of 3nm chips by 35%, improving performance by 30%, and reducing power consumption by 50%.

It is reported that Samsung's latest smartphone Galaxy S23 series uses a 4nm chip, while the chip that drives Samsung's latest flagship phone is Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip, produced by TSMC.