As if news of Qualcomm ditching Samsung in favor of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) due to the former’s low yield wasn’t enough. Now a recent development has revealed that Samsung’s executives have been manipulating yield rates in order to steal funds, that could otherwise be used to improve chip manufacturing efficiency.
According to InfoStockDaily, the South Korean tech giant is currently interrogating the possibilities of fraud in its foundry business. Following this, certain Samsung Foundry executives have also been accused of tempering the yield results of 4nm and 5nm processes to create a false impression that all is well at Samsung’s chipmaking end.
This further suggests, that Samsung’s 4nm chips – reporting a yield of as low as 35 percent when compared to TSMC’s 70 percent yield – could also have resulted due to lack of funds, making the company lose Qualcomm’s contract.
Additionally, this has also fueled speculations suggesting the possibility of Qualcomm’s next-gen 3nm chips being manufactured by TSMC alone, unlike the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, orders of which were split between both, Samsung and TSMC.
Unfortunately for Samsung, the reports of poor yields and missing funds might result in an irreplaceable loss, since Samsung and TSMC are currently the only chipmakers in the world capable of producing 5nm chips. With, the two exhaustingly working to gain the upper hand in manufacturing 3nm chips, a key customer like Qualcomm getting behind TSMC could indicate Samsung has already been left far behind in the game.