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Samsung reveals plans to make world's most advanced mobile chips
- Samsung has revealed a roadmap to expand its chip manufacturing business.
- Samsung expects to begin making 2nm process mobile chips in 2025.
- Samsung is looking to catch up to TSMC.
While Samsung is probably best known for its smartphone business, it’s not the company’s main profit driver. That title actually goes to its semiconductor manufacturing business. And Samsung has big plans for that business that include making the world’s most advanced mobile chip.
On Wednesday, the Korean tech giant revealed a roadmap for expanding its semiconductor manufacturing business, according to CNBC. It was revealed months ago that Samsung wanted to start making 2nm process chips by 2025, but this roadmap provides new details.
The roadmap says the company expects to begin mass production of the 2nm process for mobile applications in 2025. From there, it will expand to high-performance computing in 2026 and to automotive in 2027.
If you’re unfamiliar with the terminology, this nanometer process refers to the size of each individual transistor on a semiconductor chip. The size is important because it means that more transistors can fit on one chip, which allows for more powerful and efficient chips to be created.
For example, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 uses a 4nm process. Samsung reportedly believes that more advanced chips will be needed going forward.
By high-performance computing, the roadmap is referring to chips for data centers meant to train and deploy artificial intelligence applications. As AI becomes more ubiquitous, Samsung is looking to capitalize on the growth of the technology.
It appears that these moves are designed to help it catch up to the world’s leading contract manufacturer of semiconductors, TSMC. On that road, Samsung has a lot of ground to cover. In Q1 2023, TSMC reportedly accounted for 59% of global semiconductor foundry revenue, according to Counterpoint Research. While Samsung only accounted for 13%.
Additionally, the company stated that it plans to work on a 1.4nm process by 2027. It also expects to expand to its chip manufacturing capacity by opening up facilities in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, and Taylor, Texas.