There are two pieces of news in this one and on the one hand it is promising, but on the other it is a small debacle for the company. Logically, the problem is not only Samsung, but its partners, especially the strongest ones like NVIDIA. What is the future of your nodes, GPUs and NAND Flash?
Samsung Confirms Completion of 3nm GAA Research and Development
The good news is that Samsung has completed the investment in its new and more advanced node, which will include the new GAA transistors in a lithographic process manufactured in 3 nm, but the doubts after the announcement of this were seen and gave way to uncertainty when the company did not reveal when this process will be mass produced.
It makes no sense that the “completion” of a node is announced and not the forecasts of mass production, or at least the production ramp to reach the number of wafers that Samsung has planned for these GAAs at 3nm. On the other hand and for more surprise, it was revealed in 2019 that the forecasts for the first tests should be given by the end of 2020 and we already know that this did not happen.
Therefore and although Samsung has remained silent, it was already seen to come what the company did not want to say, but that Qualcomm as a preferred partner has revealed: there are problems with the node and that will lead to delays.
Qualcomm reveals Samsung, GAA not before 2024
Some statements by some Qualcomm executives have revealed everything related to the problems of the dates and according to what they commented, this GAA node at 3 nm will not come out at the end of this year as it was seen in 2019, far from it. Samsung has disastrous estimates, where being very optimistic they quote the end of 2023, but the realistic seems to be its arrival in 2024.
That is, Samsung is going to be three years behind its roadmap in the purest Intel style, and we have already seen how everything has ended for the blues and of course how AMD has raised their beards thanks in part to a very advanced node by TSMC.
NVIDIA sure has been aware of this information for months, if not years, so it will be interesting to see how far they can go with their GPUs and thus opens up a range of options after Intel’s new strategy. Will NVIDIA return to TSMC? Will it continue with Samsung? Will we see NVIDIA GPUs made by Intel?
