Samsung Foundry's main hurdle in 2nm orders from big tech companies remains

One of the reasons why Samsung Foundry's 3nm process wasn't a roaring commercial success was the low yields. TSMC was able to deliver significantly higher yields which meant that it ran away with most of the orders from major tech giants.

Samsung Foundry has made some progress with its 2nm process, but it appears that the yields still aren't as high as they need to be in order to unlock billions of dollars worth of orders from the leading chip designers.

According to a report out of South Korea, Samsung Foundry's 2nm yield remains stuck below the 60% threshold of mass production. The current yields are estimated to be at 55%, inches away from the stable mass production territory. Effective yields are likely to drop to the 40% range when back-end processing is factored in.

This means that the foundry will need more time to reach stable mass production yields over the 60% threshold. Samsung has made promising improvements over the past year, when earlier reports had claimed that yields were stuck in the 20% range as recently as the second half of last year. It took less than 12 months for Samsung to ramp up to almost 55% from there, which is a commendable achievement.

Market analysts highlight that any meaningful number of 2nm orders from major customers will only come once yields are above the 60% mark. On the other hand, TSMC's 2nm yields are reportedly in the 60-70% range which is why some of the world's top companies like NVIDIA, Apple, and AMD and getting their 2nm chips made there, and haven't committed to capacity at Samsung Foundry just yet.