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One of the ongoing story threads we've covered in the foundry business is how Samsung beat out TSMC to 14nm and the benefits information technology gained from doing so, in the grade of high-contour contracts from companies like Qualcomm. E.S. Jung, executive vice president and head of Samsung's foundry division, has now told the press that the business firm wants a 25 percentage share of contract manufacturing.

"We want to become a stiff No. two player in the market," Jung told Reuters, before adding that the visitor will try to boost its market by looking to multiple smaller companies every bit well as carving out space with cutting-edge firms. This is an always-more-of import component of whatever foundry's growth. Fifteen years ago, the benefits of a node shrink were sufficient plenty to attract even companies that don't benefit as much from dice shrinks. Analog components, Wi-Fi and cellular radios, and RF components never proceeds as much from a node switch as a conventional transistor. But over the long term, the costs and scale of manufacturing made it worthwhile for near companies to transition.

That's no longer the case. Instead, we've seen the industry pin to a circuitous discussion of 'long' versus 'short' nodes. 20nm, for example, was a short node, used by a limited number of mobile customers. 14nm, in contrast, is considered to be a long-lived node. As for 10nm and below, GlobalFoundries is skipping it entirely to head straight for 7nm (which is more similar Intel's 10nm), while TSMC and Samsung take different views of 10nm every bit well. Samsung sees 10nm as a long-lived node, while TSMC has suggested that it's more of a speed bump on their own path to 7nm.

SamsungFab

Samsung'southward Austin foundry

Merely in that location's an interesting discrepancy between Samsung'southward overall position in the market place and its specific position in contract manufacturing. Overall, Samsung is expected to overtake Intel equally the earth's largest chipmaker this twelvemonth, thanks to ongoing demand for its memory (both NAND and DRAM) hardware. Just as far as doing contract manufacturing, Samsung actually lags GlobalFoundries and TSMC.

TSMC commands ~l.half dozen percent of the contract manufacturing marketplace, compared with 9.6 percentage for GlobalFoundries and viii.1 percent for UMC. UMC isn't i of the height tier foundries any longer; the vast bulk of its business is tied to nodes between 3,500 nanometers (not a typo) and 90nm. Information technology has one 12-inch fab that's been outfitted for 14nm, Fab 12A, just it'southward not a huge competitor compared with TSMC.

Samsung's plan for this transition is to lean on revenue from its retention products while plowing an estimated $5.3 billion into developing new foundry technology that both the contract and non-contract parts of the company will share. Samsung is estimated to have earned most $5.iii billion in contract manufacturing sales in 2022 and wants to grow that by ~10% in 2022. Samsung has picked up Nvidia and Qualcomm every bit customers, only is believed to have lost the entirety of Apple's new business over the past few years, as the folks at Cupertino transitioned from Samsung SoCs exclusively to TSMC.

According to Jung, Samsung's fortunes may be critically linked to whether it can get EUV working. "You demand a technology that can wow your clients. Without such advanced applied science, it'll exist hard to win dorsum customers from your rivals," Jung said — while failing to make any mention of who those customers might be.