Samsung Foundry Inks a Chip Deal with IBM for Power11

As you know, Samsung Foundry is trying hard to attract clients for its advanced processes, such as 2nm and 3nm. However, the company’s older nodes are still in considerable demand thanks to their stable yield. It looks the firm has now secured a major deal with IBM to make the next-gen Power11 server chip using its 7nm process.

Samsung secures deal with IBM to make next-gen data center chips

IBM is one of the top five corporations in the data center CPU market. In July 2025, the multinational technology giant introduced a new enterprise server platform, Power11. The goal is to accelerate innovation in the era of AI across its processor, hardware architecture, and virtualization software stack. It wants to take advantage of Samsung’s mature process for its next-gen data center chips.

According to a report from Chosun, Samsung’s foundry division will produce the Power11 chip using its improved 7nm process. The chipmaker will also apply its 2.5D ISC architecture packaging technology to maximize performance. For the uninitiated, Samsung’s 7nm process uses extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography technology. This allowed the company to make its process 23% higher performance or 45% lower power consumption compared to the previous node.

While it’s unclear how big the deal is, it is a win for Samsung, as it could help attract more clients in the high-performance server chip market. The Korean firm continues to fall behind its arch-rival and industry leader, TSMC, in terms of revenue and market share. In this case, the deal will definitely help the company strengthen its foundry business and showcase the performance of its mature 7nm technology.

The publication says that several Chinese fabless companies are using 4nm, 8nm, and 14nm processes. A few weeks ago, Samsung struck a $16.5 billion deal with Tesla to produce AI chips for the carmaker. It will also produce DeepX’s next-generation DX-M2 AI chip using its 2nm process. This suggests that Samsung is steadily moving in the right direction to regain momentum in the semiconductor market.