AMD is expected to place an order with Samsung Electronics for advanced 3-nanometer GAA chips, which could help Samsung close the market share gap with TSMC and improve its foundry business performance.
AMD, a leading AI semiconductor design company in the United States, is expected to place an order with Samsung Electronics for an advanced chipset that will be released as early as this year. This follows AMD’s CEO Lisa Su’s announcement that the next chip will be made using the 3-nanometer GAA (Gate-All-Around) technology, which only Samsung Electronics currently uses.
A semiconductor industry insider stated, “It is believed that Samsung Electronics and AMD are currently in the negotiation phase.” If Samsung secures AMD’s order, it could reduce the approximately 50 percentage point market share gap with the leading foundry, TSMC. AMD is the world’s second-largest producer of key AI semiconductors, specifically GPUs (graphics processing units), following Nvidia.
According to the semiconductor industry, AMD’s CEO Lisa Su attended the ITF Summit 2024 held in Belgium and announced AMD’s semiconductor roadmap. She stated, “To improve power efficiency and performance, we have selected the 3-nanometer GAA process.”
GAA is a technology that Samsung Electronics was the first to introduce globally with its 3-nanometer process in 2022. It has the advantage of preventing electric current leakage within semiconductors, thereby enhancing power efficiency, although achieving a stable yield is challenging. Although TSMC is also running a 3-nanometer process, it has chosen to use the ‘Fin Field-Effect Transistor (FinFET)’ technology, which is considered a generation behind.
AMD is currently outsourcing the production of CPUs (central processing units) and GPUs for AI accelerators to TSMC’s 4-nanometer and 5-nanometer lines. However, with the explosive demand for AI, there is an urgent need to produce high-performance CPUs and GPUs that consume less power.
Therefore, there are assumptions that AMD strategically chose Samsung’s 3-nanometer GAA process due to its superior power efficiency. Additionally, it is reported that AMD is currently supplied with 5th generation HBM (HBM3E) from Samsung Electronics.
If Samsung Electronics attracts a major customer like AMD, it is expected to improve its foundry business performance significantly. Some predict that Samsung could return to profitability as early as the second half of this year. As of the first quarter of this year, the global foundry market share stood at around 62% for TSMC and 13% for Samsung Electronics.
