Samsung Foundry is reportedly on track to hit the 'first light' milestone with ASML's EUV lithography systems at its Taylor Fab 1 in the coming month and commence risk production at the facility in the second half of the year, according to Hankyung. The new fab will not be Samsung's first fab with EUV scanners; however, it seems that the facility will be the company's largest logic fab when fully ramped. It will also be the first fab to adopt pellicles for EUV patterning, something that drastically changes production flows. Implementing pellicles and the sheer scale of the fab signal that it may well be a breakthrough facility for the company.
Samsung's biggest campus yet
When Samsung announced plans to build a new leading-edge semiconductor production facility near Taylor, Texas, the intention was to build a sophisticated fab that would cost $17 billion, with construction starting in 2022, and operations beginning in 2024.
Back then, the company only said that the new site would span more than 5 million square meters (1235 acres), which is larger than the company's domestic South Korea-based campuses near Pyeongtaek and Hwaseong. To put that number into context, Intel's Silicon Desert campus near Chandler, Arizona, which houses Fab 52 and Fab 62, is around 700 acres.
Samsung did not announce which nodes the new site would use initially, aside from mentioning that it would use advanced technologies to make chips for 5G, AI, HPC, and other demanding applications. Meanwhile, the whole project got bigger in April 2024, when Samsung disclosed plans to invest as much as $44 billion in the campus, building two advanced semiconductor fab modules, an advanced packaging facility, and an R&D center. In fact, given the area of the site, it is reasonable to expect Samsung to eventually build additional fab modules.
(Image credit: Samsung)
While the shell of the first fab module was completed in late 2024 – early 2025, the company delayed moving in expensive wafer fab equipment (WFE) because it was uncertain about the node strategy, volume demand, and the lack of a big-ticket customer. Following Tesla's announcements to use Samsung Foundry's Texas capacity to build AI6 chips through 2033 and AI5 chips before that, the questions surrounding a large customer and volume were answered. So, Samsung began to install advanced tools. The company is on track to reach the 'first light' milestone with ASML's EUV tools this March.
With the Tesla contracts signed, Samsung Foundry is now targeting 50,000 wafer starts per month (WSPM) of capacity using the SF2/SF3P process technology at the Taylor fab (according to TrendForce.) Though it is unclear whether this number only describes the first module, or the capacity of the whole $44 billion project that includes two fab modules.
In any case, 50,000 WSPM capacity is much higher compared to what Intel's Fab 52 can offer (40,000 WSPM), as well as higher than what TSMC's typical fab modules can process (around 20,000 WSPM). As a result, Samsung's Taylor fab will likely be the company's largest logic production site that the company has ever operated.
Possible Pellicle pilot
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