According to Korean media Fnnews, Samsung wafer foundry seems to have received orders from major companies including AMD and Tesla. Samsung revealed at an investor forum in Hong Kong that its foundry unit is on track to become a strong competitor in the semiconductor industry. While the company has shown focused investment in its mobile unit, officials hinted that it plans to diversify its sales structure by increasing the number of customers in areas such as artificial intelligence semiconductors and automobiles.
Hyperscalers (large data center operators), automotive OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) and Tesla, among other customers, come to us wanting chips they design. When asked why they came to us, we said, "Because Samsung has these three things." Our mission is to help semiconductors, including foundries and memory, turn imagination into reality. Some of our customers are planning to sell the 4nm AI accelerator we are developing, and the number one electric vehicle company in the automotive industry is moving to 5nm. We are developing a completely autonomous version of the chip.
-Samsung President Ding Hailin
The above statement reveals Samsung's interest in its 4nm process, especially in the field of artificial intelligence. According to reports, Samsung has passed decisive quality tests of its next-generation HBM3 memory and joined the system with AMD.
It's unclear whether Samsung will eventually become a partner in the development of the MI300 accelerator, but AMD has previously made it clear that their accelerator would not be possible without TSMC's help. So it's likely that what we're seeing is some IP made by Samsung, while the chips are still very much a TSMC design. Alternatively, AMD may simply be dual-sourcing based on supply and demand.
Samsung is also creating its own advanced chip manufacturing ecosystem, known as "SAINT," which could rival TSMC's CoWoS.
In addition to orders from the field of artificial intelligence, Samsung also revealed that they have also received orders from Tesla. The company did not specify the type of process they sold to the company, but they mentioned the "5nm" process, which indicates that it may be used for Tesla's next-generation HW5.0 chip, designed for fully autonomous driving applications. As of this year, the estimated proportions of Samsung Electronics' total sales are: mobile (54%), HPC (19%) and automotive (11%).
If we cast our sights to a decade ago, most of Samsung Electronics' information came from the mobile and consumer electronics sectors, so the company's business scope was limited to the above-mentioned markets. However, as the division has grown rapidly and it has won the trust of industry customers, the South Korean giant has diversified its revenue sources, especially with the emergence of the "artificial intelligence generation" craze.