Samsung’s foundry challenges are growing as a new report said that microprocessor giant AMD will shift its 4 nm semiconductor orders away from Samsung and to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC).
According to a report from Wccftech, AMD’s decision may be also due to TSMC’s American operations. TSMC is currently building three state-of-the-art semiconductor fabs in Phoenix, Arizona, with plans to start construction on a fourth fab soon.
TSMC doubled down on its U.S. fab commitment in March pledging an additional $100 billion at the location in Arizona where it had already invested up to $65 billion.
The new facility will include:
- Three chip fabs
- Two advanced packaging facilities
- One R&D center
The report indicated that the AMD and Samsung collaboration may be collapsing after working closely with the Korean electronics giant on its SF4X process for its Ryzen APUs and Radeon GPUs.
According to market research firm TrendForce, AMD’s single foundry approach was risky given the geopolitical environment globally as well as the tariff and export restriction uncertainty. This is likely also pushing AMD to explore alternative manufacturing partners in the future.
TrendForce said, for now, TSMC maintains a clear lead in yield, performance, production capacity and process reliability.
However, reports indicate that Samsung Electronics has achieved an initial yield of more than 30% in its 2 nm test production aiming to stability the process in the second half of 2025 in preparation from mass production.
Samsung is also reportedly in the final stages of securing a deal to manufacture Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 using this 2 nm process.
