Did chip espionage, IP theft give Samsung its 14nm manufacturing lead?

Did chip espionage, IP theft give Samsung its 14nm manufacturing lead?

For most of the past decade, the semiconductor industry has been led by the same pair of companies: Intel was the most-advanced integrated device manufacturer (IDM) and led the entire market, while TSMC was the most advanced contract manufacturer (sometimes called a pure-play foundry). Samsung’s leapfrog over TSMC to become the 14nm provider of choice. A recent article has argued that Samsung’s sudden change in fortunes was no fortuitous accident, but the result of sniping several critical TSMC employees. One man in particular is alleged to have boosted Samsung’s efforts — Liang Mong-song.

TSMC first sued Liang back in 2011, alleging that the chip designer had given trade secrets to Samsung and broken his non-compete agreement. As evidence, the company submitted a lengthy report it commissioned from outside experts which compared various features of TSMC products against the manufacturing characteristics of their Samsung counterparts. As Samsung moved to lower process nodes, TSMC argued that its products began to increasingly resemble TSMC’s own hardware. According to TSMC’s engineers, the two foundries’ now have nearly identical 14/16nm process nodes.