As competition in advanced foundry (semiconductor contract manufacturing) processes intensifies, Taiwan, Japan, and Korea's foundry corporations are taking divergent strategies on mass-producing 1-nanometer (nm, one-billionth of a meter) class processes. TSMC in Taiwan and Rapidus in Japan plan to complete process development within two years and push for mass production. Samsung Electronics' foundry business unit initially said it would mass-produce a 1 nm-class process next year, but it has delayed the mass-production timeline and is focusing on the 2 nm process race.
According to the industry on the 31st, TSMC plans to begin full-scale mass production of a 1 nm-class process in 2028. Rapidus Chief Technology Officer Kazunari Ishimaru said in a recent interview with Nikkei that in the 1 nm-class process, they are "aiming to narrow the technology gap with TSMC to within about six months." Samsung Electronics' foundry business unit has pushed back the 1 nm-class mass-production timeline by about two years to 2029 from its original plan, but it is said to still be weighing the exact timing.
TSMC is accelerating toward mass production of a 1 nm-class process to solidify its No. 1 position in the foundry market. TSMC is investing about $49 billion (about 66 trillion won) to build a new fab (Fab 25) in the Central Taiwan Science Park (CTSP), and it recently detailed a plan to conduct trial production of the A14 (1.4 nm-class) process by late next year and enter full-scale mass production starting in 2028. The plan is to mass-produce next-generation application processors (APs) for Apple's iPhone there.
Japan's Rapidus has also begun developing the 1.4 nm process. Rapidus is a national foundry corporation in Japan established in August 2022 with joint investment by eight major corporations including Toyota, Sony, and NTT, aiming to revive Japan's semiconductor industry. Rapidus is reported to have set an internal plan to begin mass production in 2029. However, since it has declared it will narrow the gap with TSMC to six months, some analysts say mass production could proceed by the end of 2028. Rapidus is currently said to have received orders for Canon's camera image sensors in Japan and plans to mass-produce them using the 2-nanometer process.
However, even if Rapidus completes process development, uncertainty is said to be high regarding its prospects for securing customers. Intel, which has entered mass production of a 1 nm-class process, has demand for its own central processing units (CPUs), but in Japan there are virtually no fabless (semiconductor design corporations) that would use a 1 nm process. Global big tech corporations likely to concentrate demand for 1 nm-class processes are expected to prefer TSMC, whose stability has been verified, and to place Samsung Electronics and Intel, which have production bases in the United States, as lower-priority corporations.
Samsung Electronics' foundry business unit postponed the mass-production timeline from 2027 to 2029, and even that is understood to be uncertain. The aim is to focus on the 2 nm race, where it struggled to win big tech customers due to weak Production yield. Samsung Electronics' foundry 2 nm process is recently said to have surpassed a 60% Production yield, but the prevailing view is that yield and process performance still need improvement to compete with TSMC.
A semiconductor industry official said, "The top priority for Samsung Electronics' foundry business unit is reducing losses. To that end, it is first raising utilization of legacy (mature) processes and enhancing the stability of the 2-nanometer process, where big tech demand is strong," adding, "Rather than forcing 1 nm-class process development and pushing commercialization, the focus appears to be on stability."