Summary
- TSMC is the market leader in making microchips
- Samsung faces issues with 3nm process, prompting Google and Qualcomm to switch to TSMC.
- A potentially cooler, more efficient Tensor G5 chip from TSMC will ship on next year’s Pixel 10.
Making microchips is not a perfect process. To turn a silicon wafer into the powerful SoCs we see on today’s computers and smartphones takes a dizzying array of optical and chemical processes, and at the end of it all, there is almost always a notable percentage of dies (the core of a chip) that are defective. One of the things that separates the best chip producers (called foundries in industry parlance) from the rest is the number of functional dies produced per silicon wafer. Right now, the king of silicon is undoubtedly TSMC, which just snatched Google away from Samsung’s Foundry Division.
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The story was broken by Business Korea (via Android Authority) earlier today and outlines some of the problems Samsung’s foundry has been having with its 3nm process, particularly with its low yields and the higher-power consumption of its chips. Google’s Tensor chips, which have been made by Samsung up until now, are prone to overheating, a problem common to Samsung’s Exynos line of chips. Because of these ongoing issues with Samsung’s chips, both Google and Qualcomm are switching to TSMC for their 3nm needs.
This could be good news for next year’s Pixel fans because the Tensor G5 chip in the Pixel 10 could run cooler than previous Pixel chips, and consume less power. Rumors of a TSMC-produced Tensor G5 have been swirling for the past month and this story out of Korea all but confirms them. The Tensor G4 will ship in the Pixel 9 this year and will still be produced by Samsung.
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Samsung was the first on the 3nm scene back in 2022, but has been losing ground to TSMC, the world’s largest chipmaker, which controls over 60% of the market. Problems at the Samsung foundry have been so prominent that Samsung has been known to only put its own Exynos chips in the phones it releases in international markets. An analyst report released yesterday even hints that Samsung will abandon the Exynos 2500 chip in favor of a Qualcomm chip for the Galaxy S25. Even Samsung prefers TSMC over Samsung.