TSMC is expected to raise prices for 2nm wafers, a move that could prompt long-time big customers including Nvidia and Apple to start more seriously evaluating Samsung as an alternative foundry partner. TSMC's 2nm process is regarded as the "benchmark" advanced process in the current industry, but against the backdrop of rising inflation and material costs, the price of the new generation of ultra-fine processes has also risen.
Currently, TSMC is accelerating 2nm mass production. Its technical route relies on more advanced extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography equipment and nanosheet structures, which has obvious advantages in performance and energy efficiency. However, equipment investment and packaging difficulty have increased sharply, making the unit cost of 2nm more likely to be repriced "steeply" compared to the mass-produced 3nm process.
A report from Korean media DDaily pointed out that as the unit price of the new generation of ultra-fine processes shows a "gradual increase" trend, the recent public statements of TSMC management have also strengthened this market expectation. Industry research institutions and academic experts believe that the cost pressure of the 2nm process in terms of equipment introduction and packaging process complexity will become the core factor driving the quotation to continue to rise.
Against this background, Samsung's semiconductor foundry business has gained price advantages due to its adoption of GAA (gate all around) transistor architecture at 2nm and 3nm nodes. Compared with TSMC, Samsung's pricing strategy at the GAA process node is considered to be more flexible, leaving more room for unit price negotiations, which gives it a "cost-effective" bargaining chip in the next-generation process competition.
Some people believe that when TSMC continues to raise the price threshold, the "reasonable unit price range" of Samsung Electronics' foundry and its "gap opportunities" in the next-generation GAA process will attract more and more attention from the market. For leading chip design companies such as Nvidia and Apple that have long relied on TSMC, although TSMC will still be the first choice in the short term for core products such as high-end GPUs and flagship mobile phone SoCs, it has become a realistic option to start diversifying the supply chain in other product lines and even emerging application fields.
The report pointed out that although TSMC has emphasized that there will be no "sudden price changes", it has also made it clear that it will adjust its quotations in stages according to the market environment. So far, this price curve has almost only shown a one-way upward trend. As 2nm demand gradually releases, TSMC's 3nm node is expected to continue to play the role of a "cash cow" to support the company's overall revenue with a more mature and larger-capacity mass production platform.
In this process, the market's trade-off between production capacity and cost is reshaping the foundry landscape. The industry expects that while major customers such as Nvidia, Apple and Qualcomm will continue to rely on TSMC for high-end core chips, they can shift some of their chip orders for automotive electronics, robotics, edge AI and other fields to Samsung, with the latter undertaking larger, long-term foundry tasks. Although this potential adjustment is still in the early planning stage, it has already outlined the outlines of the "multi-centralization" of global chip foundry and price re-game in the next few years.
Samsung hopes to use the price competitiveness of 2nm and 3nm GAA processes, coupled with continuous improvement in yield rate, to narrow the gap with TSMC in the next round of advanced process competition. As global semiconductor demand extends from high-performance computing to automobiles, industry and edge smart terminals, whoever can find a more attractive balance between cost, production capacity and technology will take the initiative in the future foundry market competition.
Under the current dual effects of cost pressure and supply and demand gap, the 2nm and 3nm competition between TSMC and Samsung is no longer just a competition in process technology, but also a comprehensive game of capital expenditure, price strategy and supply chain security. For chip design companies, how to strike a balance between technological leadership and cost control, and how to resolve risks through multiple foundry partner configurations, is likely to become a key issue in strategic decision-making in the next few years.