Samsung, the world’s largest contract chip manufacturing firm after TSMC, wants to become the largest semiconductor chip company by the end of this decade. For this purpose, it is said that the company will purchase more advanced chip production equipment from ASML. It has been reported that the South Korean company will import additional EUV (Extreme Ultraviolet lithography) chip production equipment from the Netherlands-based ASML company, the leader in its segment, next year.Samsung is making significant investments in semiconductor production
Although the exact details of the new deal have not yet been made public, some reports claim that Samsung Electronics will import a total of 50 units from ASML over the next five years. Each of these units is worth approximately $153 million. With EUV, both cost and time savings can be achieved.
Unlike legacy processes, EUV equipment can print the circuit design on one chip at a time. However, EUV equipment is very costly and complex to build. The fact that the number of companies producing EUV machines is very small is an indication of this. ASML can only produce 60 EUV equipment each year, and only five chip companies in the world need this equipment: Intel, Micron, Samsung Foundry, SK Hynix and TSMC. Currently, 70% of the EUV equipment produced by ASML is purchased by market leader TSMC.
EUV is also very valuable for the 3nm process. Samsung and TSMC can already produce 3nm. Both companies are expected to offer this option to companies starting next year. TSMC had already started 3nm production for Apple this year. On the other hand, Samsung aims to produce 2nm chips in 2025 and 1.4nm chips in 2027.
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