A chip-manufacturing plant is currently being constructed by Samsung and is located in Taylor, Texas. The fabrication facility’s establishment bill is said to cost a mammoth $40 billion, and during this time, there was a report doing the rounds, claiming that the Korean giant had withdrawn personnel from the plant, with just a skeleton crew operating there, as it was unable to improve its 2nm GAA yields beyond the 10-20 percent range. Fortunately, a company executive has put an end to all those rumors, stating that the manufacturing hub will be completed by mid-2025.
The executive also responded to the rumors claiming that workers left the Samsung plant
Dave Porter, the Executive Director at the Williamson County Economic Development Partnership, told The Korea Herald in a recent interview in Seoul that Samsung cycles employment locations every two years. The people who were previously stationed at the Taylor plant have now been relocated to South Korea, and a new group operates at the site. Porter also states that construction is progressing smoothly, with around 6,000 workers reporting at the plant daily.
“There was a recent story that workers left, but Samsung every two years recycles in other employees. So the employees there came back to Korea, and they have a new group of employees or construction workers on site.”
The Executive Director estimates that the fabrication plant will be completed between early and mid-2025, with wafer production expected to commence between early and mid-2026, which aligns with Samsung’s forecast for increased chip demand. To get the momentum running at the Taylor facility, the report states that Samsung requires around 150 suppliers to support the operation. While the initial wave of companies has arrived, they have scaled back their preparations.
Porter did not clarify which lithography Samsung’s Taylor facility will start with, but it was initially believed to mass produce wafers of advanced processes below the 4nm node. Currently, the Korean behemoth is the only producer of chips with the ‘Gate All Around’ architecture, but its attempts to surpass TSMC have continuously been hampered by low yields. This setback caused it to lose orders for the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4, but Qualcomm is reportedly adamant about getting Samsung back into the fold for the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 next year to lower its production costs.
Next year’s chipset could rely on a dual-sourcing option from both TSMC and Samsung, with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 possibly getting mass produced on the Taiwanese giant’s 3nm ‘N3P’ technology, while leveraging Samsung’s 2nm GAA node, also known as SF2. Unfortunately, if those yields do not cross the 10-20 percent mark, Qualcomm and a boatload of customers will find little encouragement to give orders to Samsung, and that might mean that the Taylor facility’s completion would be in vain.
News Source: The Korea Herald
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