Samsung's 4nm Foundry Yield Said to Rise Above 80%

According to Seoul Economic Daily citing industry sources, Samsung Electronics' 4nm process technology has recently achieved a yield rate exceeding 80%, entering a more technologically stable phase of mature process technology, which means that Samsung's competitiveness in advanced process technology manufacturing has been further enhanced.

The report states that Samsung's 4nm technology completeness has approached TSMC's level, with orders from global large-scale technology companies on the rise, and the market has also raised its expectations for Samsung's manufacturing division to turn a profit ahead of schedule.

It was mentioned in the report, Groq, which was acquired by Nvidia at the end of last year, has entrusted all the production of its Language Processing Unit (LPU) to Samsung's 4nm process, from the first-generation product LP1 three years ago to this year's LP3, all of which have been manufactured by Samsung; IBM, automotive chip company Ambarella, Baidu, mining machine manufacturer Faraday, and Korean AI chip companies Rebellions and FuriosaAI are also using Samsung's 4nm process.

The synergy between the manufacturing business and the memory business is also strengthening. The report mentioned that Samsung's manufacturing division is exclusively producing the base wafers needed for the 6th generation High Bandwidth Memory (HBM4), and Samsung has been the first to achieve mass production of HBM4. Improvements in manufacturing yield rates will directly affect the competitiveness of products in the memory business.

The market forecasts accordingly that Samsung Electronics' non-memory business (wafer manufacturing and system LSI) could realize a profit turning point as early as the second half of this year.An industry insider stated that the price of 12-inch wafers used as base wafers for HBM4 has increased by more than 50% compared to before, each exceeding 20,000 US dollars (equivalent to about 30 million won); revenue related to HBM4 could exceed 30 trillion won.