As if the news coming in of Qualcomm actually ditching Sammy in favor of TSMC thanks to the former’s low yield weren’t enough, now, new reports have actually made their way where it is being suggested that executives belonging to Korean manufacturer Samsung have actually been manipulating yield rates in order to steal funds which would otherwise have been used for the sake of improving chipmaking efficiency.
In accordance with what the latest reports have been suggestive of, there is the indication right now that Samsung is actually in the process of currently investigating the possibility of fraud as far as its foundry business happens to be concerned. Certain executives down at Samsung Foundry have been accused of fabricating the yield rate of both the 4nm as well as the 5nm processes in order to create a false impression that all is indeed well at the brand’s chipmaking arm.
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Yield rate, which is also termed as the die rate, happens to be the number of working chips on wafer and is then expressed as a percentage due to the fact that the number of chips can indeed vary in accordance with both chip as well as wafer sizes. For Samsung, this stood at a very poor percentage of 35% and this was especially poor when compared with TSMC’s figure of 70% in the very same regard. This was also touted as being the reason why Qualcomm ended up switching sides in the first place.
All in all then, it makes it very possible that Qualcomm’s next generation 3nm processor will in fact be manufactured by TSMC alone, as opposed then to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 – orders of which have been apportioned between that of Samsung as TSMC.
Reports with respect to poor yields as well as missing funds from Samsung come at a very poor time due to the fact that TSMC as of now is the only chipmaker across the globe that is capable enough to produce chips in excess of 5nm.
