Samsung Delays Texas Chip Fab to Consider 2nm Process Upgrade

[Nomad76]

Samsung Electronics is delaying construction at its planned new chip factory in Taylor, Texas. The company is considering upgrading the factory to produce more advanced 2 nm chips instead of the originally planned 4 nm chips. Samsung will make a final decision on this in Q3 2024. In April, the US government provided $6.4 billion to support Samsung's $40 billion investment in Texas chip facilities, including the Taylor factory. However, reports now suggest Samsung may skip 4 nm production at Taylor altogether.

The Taylor factory was expected to open by 2026, but equipment orders have been delayed while Samsung re-evaluates the plans. This upgrade consideration comes after Samsung recently appointed a new CEO for its semiconductor business (Device Solutions Division) to focus on new growth opportunities. While Samsung's memory chip profits surged in 2024, its previous 3 nm chip was not very successful. By going straight to 2 nm in Taylor, Samsung likely aims to leapfrog competitors in advanced chip manufacturing (TSMC, and Intel plan to produce 2 nm-class chips in the US by the end of this decade).



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[Metroid]

Samsung is the new intel 14+++++++++++++++ approach I guess.

 

[MxPhenom 216]

Samsung is the new intel 14+++++++++++++++ approach I guess.

How did you gather that from this article

 

[Assimilator]

Delaying so they can squeeze more money out of the government. I don't understand why the government doesn't just build and own the factories themselves... oh wait because that's "communism".

 

[R0H1T]

There's a very good chance that there would be a glut of fab capacity 5-10 years down the line. The ones you're seeing highlighted now are mostly in the West or Taiwan remember China's probably doing this at an even larger scale!

 

[GenericUsername2001]

Delaying so they can squeeze more money out of the government. I don't understand why the government doesn't just build and own the factories themselves... oh wait because that's "communism".

To be fair, even the Communist Party in China has decided that subsidizing corporations to build fabs for them makes more sense than having the government try to do it directly. Setting up this sort of thing is well out of the wheel house of any existing government agency, so a brand new agency would have to be created, tons of people hired & trained, and so on; its not like the 1920s when the government could end a rail strike by having the army run the trains, since building & running fabs is a much, much more complicated task needing very educated and specialized workers.

 

[A&P211]

How did you gather that from this article

By adding all the words and spaces, that equals how many "+" there is.
Simple 1st grade math.

 

[kondamin]

Delaying so they can squeeze more money out of the government. I don't understand why the government doesn't just build and own the factories themselves... oh wait because that's "communism".

Delaying because they can see the writing on the wall good times are over and they will need their money to keep things going

 

[Fatalfury]

by the looks of it, TSMC has mass production of 4nm like this year with 3nm coming late 2024 or early 2025 for other chips other than apple.

no use making 4nm chips in 2027 by Samsung or intel..(well u can use it for many other products but still, not for cutting edge technology).

even mid range, GPUs,cpus won't be running on 4nm in 2027.

 

[kondamin]

by the looks of it, TSMC has mass production of 4nm like this year with 3nm coming late 2024 or early 2025 for other chips other than apple.

no use making 4nm chips in 2027 by Samsung or intel..(well u can use it for many other products but still, not for cutting edge technology).

even mid range, GPUs,cpus won't be running on 4nm in 2027.

AMD probably will or 6 is more likely for their graphics cards

 

[persondb]

by the looks of it, TSMC has mass production of 4nm like this year with 3nm coming late 2024 or early 2025 for other chips other than apple.

no use making 4nm chips in 2027 by Samsung or intel..(well u can use it for many other products but still, not for cutting edge technology).

even mid range, GPUs,cpus won't be running on 4nm in 2027.

Not everything needs to be on the bleeding edge nodes. There is still going a ton of chips that will use 4nm for years to come.

Things like cheap SoCs(relatively speaking), SSD Controllers(that are now just barely going to 7nm), AI accelerators, legacy products(remember that many need to be kept in production for a decade due to industry/business needs), NICs, etc etc.

There is a ton of things still in older nodes that could slowly migrate to 4nm in 2027. This includes SoCs for low-end and mid-range Phones too, to put into perspective the Snapdragon 6s Gen 3 which is released in Q2 2024 still uses TSMC N6.

The upcoming Switch 2 is likely to use Samsung 8nm node that was used for Ampere too.

 

[Nomad76]

by the looks of it, TSMC has mass production of 4nm like this year with 3nm coming late 2024 or early 2025 for other chips other than apple.

no use making 4nm chips in 2027 by Samsung or intel..(well u can use it for many other products but still, not for cutting edge technology).

even mid range, GPUs,cpus won't be running on 4nm in 2027.

Intel is advancing with 3nm, with (at least) its Oregon and Ireland fabs operating at full capacity. Sidenote, while we don't cover the data center industry in detail on TPU, it's worth noting the surge in new and expanded data centers, driven by increasing AI demand. 4nm won't die but it seems production will be on low levels, the majority going with 3nm, others betting on 2nm from 2027 onward.