TECH NEWS – The South Korean company has essentially made a U-turn on technology that was previously considered subpar.
The difficulties faced by Samsung’s manufacturing division may soon end, as the 4-nanometer manufacturing process, which was previously a nightmare for the South Korean tech giant, is slowly stabilizing. According to the latest information, yields are in the 60%-70% range. This improvement has brought Samsung a significant order for its older technology: an American company requested Omni Processing Unit (OPU) processors and pre-ordered chips worth more than $100 million.
Tsavorite Scalable Intelligence (TSI), a U.S.-based AI company, reportedly needs OPU technology, which combines a CPU, GPU, and memory on a single chip. In November, Reuters reported that the company had pre-ordered more than $100 million worth of AI chips to expand its workflow but did not mention the manufacturer. According to Aju News, the company pre-ordered approximately 150 billion won (more than $100 million) worth of Samsung’s AI chips.
These orders allow TSI to save significantly on chips. As demand for 3 and 2 nm nodes grows, Samsung can offer significant discounts on 4 nm silicon wafers to its customers. The biggest obstacle for the chipmaker has perhaps been poor yields, which affected not only 3nm GAA technology, but also caused a series of failures. This resulted in orders being placed with TSMC.
Despite the recent news that Samsung’s first 2-nm GAA chipset, the Exynos 2600, has not yet entered mass production, we learned in September that the company had begun mass producing the system-on-a-chip with a 50% yield. Further evidence of Samsung Foundry’s comeback is that the company received orders from two Chinese cryptocurrency mining equipment manufacturers and signed a $16.5 billion deal with Tesla.
Although TSI’s $100 million pre-order pales in comparison to Samsung’s operational scale, it is a small step for TSI to increase its estimated profits to $69 billion by 2026 and achieve positive cash flow in its manufacturing business by 2027.
