Samsung is considering making a deal to produce its Exynos chips with its rival TSMC. Undoubtedly, for a couple of years, Samsung has been falling behind in its competition with TSMC in terms of yield rates. Therefore, it’s not surprising from the tweet (via @Jukanlosreve) that the company is seeking help from TSMC for its foundry Exynos chips.
Recently, after the Snapdragon 8 Elite revelation, the company had to withdraw the Exynos 2500 idea from its flagship Galaxy S25 series, which is why it’s important for the company to make a deal with TSMC so that the show can go on. Meanwhile, it’s likely the company will work around for a breakthrough.
The exponential growth of AI inclusion in flagship devices has made power efficiency and performance the most important factors for chipsets. Another factor to be considered these days is thickness. Hence, to maintain all this, the company needs to minimize the node size and simultaneously maximize its yield rate.
It’s not that Samsung has not tried its best to bring its Exynos into the competition. Apparently, they managed to compete with TSMC in 4nm yield rates.
Last month, the company used the 3nm GAA processing idea to compete with the Taiwanese 3nm yield rate of 50 to 60 percent, which has been rumored recently to achieve 80% and above. However, Samsung has not been able to perfect its yield rate, and the result of the 3nm yield is way below the standard rate.
Now we just leave with the question- Will there be any collaboration between Samsung & TSMC? In the semiconductor industry, both are rivals and in history, neither of them has had direct collaboration. They are not dependent on each other to survive in the ecosystem. However, when we consider the aspects of supply and demand, neither of them can fulfill them alone.
Hopefully, Samsung’s System LSI branch can make a deal with TSMC, and we will see Exynos 2500 on the show!
