The war for foundry supremacy in the AI ​​era: TSMC’s dominance and Samsung’s counterattack begins > News

The first quarter report card of the foundry market was truly dominated by TSMC. According to the latest figures from market research firm Trend Force, TSMC has solidified its position as a key hub for global semiconductor production, recording an astonishing 72.3% market share. Production facilities have already reached their limit as NVIDIA's GPUs, which are essential for AI learning and inference, as well as cutting-edge chips from large customers such as Apple and AMD are pouring into TSMC's advanced processes. Paradoxically, this supply bottleneck served as an opportunity for TSMC to strengthen its market dominance, but at the same time, it had the side effect of providing customers with a justification for supply chain diversification, known as 'de-TSMC'. Moreover, TSMC is facing the legal risk of a patent infringement lawsuit recently filed with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), putting it in a position where it must struggle on a new front: patent defense beyond its technological superiority.

Samsung Electronics' move to take advantage of TSMC's production capacity saturation and legal risks is very strategic and aggressive. Beyond being a consignment company that simply produces chips, Samsung is pursuing a 'comprehensive semiconductor solution' strategy that combines memory (HBM), foundry, and cutting-edge packaging technology. Google's recent move to win orders for the I/O die, a key component in the next-generation AI chip 'Icefish (TPU 10th generation)' project, using the 2-nm process can be said to be the culmination of this strategy. This will go beyond simply winning foundry orders and will serve as an opportunity to imprint Samsung's technological prowess deep into Google's AI ecosystem. In addition, by securing partnerships for Tesla's self-driving chip production and NVIDIA's inference chip, Samsung is breaking the chain of losses and laying the foundation for full-scale improvement in profitability.

The competition for second place in the global foundry market is becoming complex, with Samsung Electronics, Intel, and China's SMIC becoming entangled in a multilateral structure. In particular, Intel has emerged as a strong competitor to Samsung, winning large-scale TPU volumes from Google by leveraging the political strength of strong subsidy support from the U.S. government and mainland production. China's SMIC is also pursuing Samsung by increasing its market share with the government's full support, despite the limitations of technological sanctions. In this situation, Samsung's ability to secure the yield of cutting-edge processes below 2 nanometers is expected to be a key variable in recovering market share and widening the gap in the future. The fact that big tech companies are adopting a 'multi-foundry' strategy of utilizing multiple foundries simultaneously to reduce supply chain risks is a clear opportunity for Samsung.

It is very meaningful that the competitiveness of the semiconductor industry is not simply determined by technology or production capacity, and that governance and institutional environment determine national competitiveness. In the past, Korea had the world's first vision and excellent shipbuilding competitiveness in the offshore wind power market, but lost leadership to Taiwan due to issues with resident acceptance and inter-ministerial conflicts. This also has implications for the semiconductor industry. Semiconductors also find it difficult to survive in the global battlefield if they are not supported by national-level infrastructure support, talent acquisition, and a cooperative ecosystem between companies. Just as TSMC has secured an unrivaled position based on the full support of the Taiwanese government and a solid supply chain ecosystem, Samsung Electronics must also take the lead in future industries by optimizing its domestic and overseas production bases and through close technological integration with big tech customers.