In July, it became known that the TSMC project to build factories in Arizona will be delayed, and the first of two factories will start producing chips using N4 technology no earlier than 2025. This means that competitor Samsung Electronics can claim that it will start producing its 4nm chips in Texas as early as the fourth quarter of 2024, faster than its competitor.
Image source: Samsung Electronics
As explained The Korean HeraldKyung Kye-hyun, CEO of Samsung Electronics, made the comments during his speech to students at Seoul National University this week. As you know, Samsung Electronics is building its second plant in Texas, specializing in custom manufacturing of chips for local customers. The company boss is convinced that Samsung can start producing 4 nm components at this location by the end of 2024. The Samsung executive expressed pride in advance about the company’s employees, whose selfless work will allow it to surpass its competitor in the implementation of the 4nm project in the US, even if TSMC has a certain start-up time advantage.
However, as the agency noted ReutersMark Liu, CEO of TSMC, gained confidence after his visit to Arizona in August that this project will be successful for the company. “In the last five months we have made impressive progress” He commented on progress in building a chip manufacturing facility in Arizona.
The Samsung Electronics chief also pointed out that successes in contract business should help this South Korean company’s business capitalization surpass US$752 billion. According to the spokesman, the main problem for Samsung in the development of contract business is precisely the lack of qualified specialists. The company will advance in the field of lithography and towards the production of memory chips. For example, the manufacturer will use 10nm-class lithography to manufacture DRAM chips and use a 1000-layer layout to manufacture 3D NAND solid-state memories. Particular attention is paid to 3D chip packaging technologies.
By the way, Samsung Electronics nominally managed to bypass TSMC in the development of 3nm technology, but the problem is that the South Korean company has not yet increased the production volume of its core products and has not expanded the customer list , while TSMC, although it there were delays in this respect, the mass production of 3 nm chips is now well advanced and production of the second generation of 3 nm technology (N3E) will start in the next quarter.
In addition, the main reason behind the delay in starting TSMC production in the US is the lack of skilled workers with the specialized skills needed to install semiconductor manufacturing equipment. As Mark Liu, chairman of TSMC, noted in July: “As we work to improve the situation, including sending experienced technicians from Taiwan to train local technicians for a short period of time, we anticipate that the N4 technology production schedule will be pushed back to 2025“.
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