Foundry rumors: Samsung's flagship factory at 5 nm below 50% yield

0
183

Completed only a year ago, the Fab V1 in Hwaseong is the current showpiece of Samsung's foundry division. In the factory, the most modern 5 nm chips are produced on many lines using EUV lithography, but according to insiders there are still major yield problems with certain products.

It's not the first time that rumors have been circulating of problems with the yield of Samsung's new manufacturing methods. For new factories, this is sometimes the norm when starting up, but a yield of functioning chips of less than half of the produced chips is a bad result. In series production, chip manufacturers aim for 95 percent and more.

The BusinessKorea report does not explicitly go into the problems that exist, and it only names “some” affected products. In this respect, the statements should be treated with caution, because Samsung is currently expanding the factory. In the second half of this year, according to the current plan, the output of EUV chips is to be increased significantly, as the factory complex in Pyeongtaek was further upgraded at the same time “> Samsung manufacturing moves more into focus

Samsung's production and the yield have moved into a much stronger focus than ever since the order from Nvidia for the production of the Ampere graphics chips. At the beginning, viewed directly as the bogeyman, many saw the production of the chips as the only problem for the hardly available graphics cards. But the topic is not that black and white, because sometimes the smallest parts or only substrates are missing to build additional graphics cards.

However, delays in production or problems a tradition at Samsung. After it became known last week that the flagship project for the future relating to 3-nm production with Gate All Around (GAA) will probably only be feasible in large-scale production in 2024, there are also rumors about a division of the upcoming ones Products. Qualcomm, as a major customer, is to use Samsung's 4 nm production facility for its next Snapdragon 895 smartphone SoC. For a Snapdragon 895+, however, 4 nm from TSMC should be used.