For a long time, TSMC has played a dominant role in the chip foundry field. Regardless of foundry technology or foundry scale, they are all leading competitors. However, in recent times, news about "changes in the chip foundry market" and "Samsung replacing TSMC" have been emerging online.

The reason is that Samsung demonstrated the world's first 3nm chip at the IEEE ISSCC International Solid-State Circuit Conference held not long ago.

Moreover, the chip displayed by Samsung not only uses the most advanced process technology, but also further upgrades TSMC's GAAFET (surround gate field effect transistor) technology.

To put it simply, TSMC and Samsung currently use FinFET (Fin Field Effect Transistor) technology when producing 5nm chips. The GAAFET technology used in Samsung's 3nm chips is regarded as the next generation technology of FinFET.

The advantage of this technology is its excellent structure, and chips using FinFET technology can accommodate more transistors.

GAAFET technology not only maintains the advantages of FinFET technology, but also sorts and adjusts the transistors on the chip to maximize energy utilization. This achieves energy saving and heat reduction effects.

According to official data from Samsung, 3nm chips using GAAFET technology have 50% lower power consumption and 30% higher performance than 3nm chips using FinFET technology.

If the data given by Samsung is true, then Samsung's 3nm chips with GAAFET technology will definitely perform better than TSMC chips of the same period. Samsung's goal of overtaking TSMC and becoming the world's number one chip foundry may be achieved within the next two years.

However, TSMC is not without its back-ups. You know, TSMC has always been proud of its superb technology in the market. Facing the menacing Samsung this time, TSMC also began to speed up and carried out technological upgrades in its chip technology.

According to Taiwanese media reports, TSMC will join forces with the Japanese chip industry to jointly sprint for 2nm chips. Although Japan does not have advanced wafer foundries, it occupies a very important position in the upstream of advanced technology.

Take EUV lithography machines, which are most familiar to domestic users, as an example. As we all know, ASML is the only company in the world that has the ability to produce EUV lithography machines. But many people don’t know that ASML lacks the help of Japanese companies and it is impossible to build an EUV lithography machine.

Japanese companies play an important role in many aspects of EUV lithography machine manufacturing. Japan's Tokyo Electronics occupies 100% of the photolithography machine coating and development equipment market. Japan's Lasertec Corp is also the only company in the world that can produce EUV mask inspection equipment. In terms of photoresist sales, Japanese manufacturers also have a far leading share.

For TSMC, relying on the deep technical foundation of the Japanese semiconductor industry, new technology research and development will be more effective with half the effort. Japan is also looking forward to cooperating with TSMC. In fact, as early as 2020, Japan extended an olive branch to TSMC and invited TSMC to build an advanced chip manufacturing plant in Japan.

In addition, Japan has also brought together local chip equipment giants such as Tokyo Electronics, Canon, and SCREEN to form a research and development team. It plans to establish next-generation semiconductor manufacturing technology after 2nm in the middle of this year, and requires these companies to set up test production lines to develop related fine electrical processing and cleaning technologies. It can be said that Japan is fully prepared for this cooperation.

Based on previous news announced by TSMC, TSMC will use MBCFET (Multi-Bridge Channel Field Effect Transistor) technology on the 2nm process, which is also a type of GAAFET technology. This process will be put into small-scale trial production in 2023 and become popular in 2024. More advanced than Samsung's 3nmGAAFET technology.

In addition to Samsung and TSMC, another chip giant, Intel, is also eyeing the chip foundry market. However, in the short term, Intel's strength is still far behind Samsung and TSMC.

The strong dialogue between Samsung and TSMC will be the most common scene in the chip foundry market in the next five to ten years.