Global Foundry Industry, Foundry Mass Production Roadmap
Intel’s construction of a foundry (semiconductor contract manufacturing) plant in Germany has been delayed to 2025 due to delayed subsidy payments. Intel has chosen to leapfrog the cutting-edge 3-nanometer process (1nm=1 billionth of a meter) and chose the sub-2-nanometer process as a crucial point to expand its foundry market share, necessitating a revision to its ultrafine process roadmap. Samsung Electronics is accelerating the acquisition of large customers, including the potential order of next-generation semiconductor chips from AMD, the second-largest company in the graphics processing unit (GPU) market.
On June 3, according to multiple media outlets, including Germany’s semiconductor industry, Intel postponed the groundbreaking ceremony for its foundry plants Fab 29.1 and Fab 29.2 to May 2025. The location of the plants is expected to be built in Magdeburg, Germany. The construction cannot begin until the black soil is removed from the factory site. The black soil is known to be unfit for factory construction due to its soft nature. The state government plans to transport black soil to other regions in the second half of this year and complete it by May 2025.
Additionally, the payment of a subsidy of approximately $12 billion, which the German government has agreed to bear out of the $327 billion that Intel has decided to invest in building a factory in Germany, is not being made. This is due to the European Union (EU) Commission’s final approval not being given. Originally, Intel Corporation’s foundry plant in Germany was supposed to start construction in the first half of 2023, but the groundbreaking has been indefinitely postponed for about 2 years.
The delay in building the German factory will disrupt Intel’s plan to strengthen its foundry competitiveness. The factory is also the production base for the next-generation process. Intel planned to operate Fab 29.1 and Fab 29.2 in the second half of 2027 and produce products applying 14A (1.4-nano-class) and 10A (1-nano-class) processes. However, considering the 4 to 5 years to build two factories, the factory was predicted to start full-scale operation in 2029. Amid Intel’s recording of a $2.5 billion operating loss in the foundry business in the first quarter of this year, the strategy to secure a competitive edge in the ultrafine process competition has stumbled. This clouded Intel Corporation’s plan to rise to second place in the foundry market by 2030, overtaking Samsung Electronics.
Samsung Electronics is focusing on expanding the order volume of its customers by improving the yield of 3-nano mass production, etc. The industry is considering the possibility that Samsung Electronics has secured AMD as a 3-nano customer. AMD CEO Lisa Su recently announced a plan to mass-produce next-generation chips using the 3-nano Gate-All-Around (GAA) process at the IMEC Technology Conference (ITF 2024) held in Antwerp, Belgium. Samsung Electronics is the only foundry company that applies the next-generation transistor technology GAA in the 3-nano process.
TSMC uses the existing FinFET technology up to 3 nano and applies GAA to produce from the 2-nano process. GAA improves data processing speed and power efficiency by wrapping around the four surfaces of the current flowing channel. It has decided to produce a 3-nano GAA process for the stable implementation of AI chips, which consume too much power.
An industry insider said, “Due to TSMC’s Apple priority policy, the possibility of global fabless (semiconductor design specialists), including AMD, which is discriminated against in price, joining hands with Samsung Electronics is increasing.”
