Samsung 10nm and 7nm Strategy Explained!

By SemiWiki

April 25, 2016

Samsung Foundry had an intimate gathering recently for 200 customers and partners that I missed, but I know several people who attended. This event was a precursor to #53DAC where Samsung has the largest foundry presence. I was able to clarify what I had heard via a phone call with Kelvin Low so here is my version of what is important:

Samsung is all in on the foundry business
Samsung is opening up their 200mm fabs, internal IP, design methodologies (IE: low power), and related services (packaging) to foundry customers. To me this is a definitive statement as to their foundry commitment. Samsung is not however going into the captive ASIC business like TSMC (GUC), UMC (Faraday), GlobalFoundries (Invacas), and SMIC (Brite Semiconductor). Samsung could easily buy an established ASIC supplier like eSilicon, Open-Silicon, or Verisilicon, but Samsung is choosing to not compete with their ASIC partners, which makes complete sense since the other foundries do. I would bet Samung will get a much larger share of the ASIC business in the not too distant future (it’s a safe bet since I have already asked my ASIC friends about this).

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