Samsung Foundry allegedly winds down parts of 4 nm, 5 nm and 7 nm manufacturing facilities due to poor demand

A new report from South Korean media outket Chosung says Samsung plans to shutter many of its trailing edge fabs in the country. Reportedly, 30% of Samsung Foundry's 4 nm, 5 nm and 7 nm facilities will be non-functional and that figure will rise to 50% by the end of this year. Currently, Samsung's 4 nm node only makes a handful of chips such as the Exynos 2400 and some S-branded chips from Qualcomm.

Apparently, poor demand is one of the reasons pushing Samsung to temporarily shut down its fabrication plants. However, the equipment might still be around in a powered-down state to save electricity costs and not mothballed altogether. Demand for Samsung nodes has been especially poor since the Snapdragon 888 and Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 failed to hold up against the competitors, effectively forcing Qualcomm to look at TSMC for its cutting-edge chips. Others like Nvidia also made the eventual transition to the Taiwanese chipmaker, leaving Samsung with only a handful of customers.

Samsung's cutting-edge 3 nm (and beyond) nodes don't seem to be affected because their future looks promising. Previously, it was revealed that Samsung 3GAP was afflicted with sub-par yields. Nevertheless, things are looking better for Samsung's 2 nm node. For one, it has secured a contract with Japenese company Preferred Networks for AI chips. Plus, Qualcomm might use Samsung Foundy to manufacture its Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 for Galaxy. Samsung has even started development of a 2 nm Exynos chip.