Looks like the main idea is to produce the chip and not the miner. Not sure if they will sell their chips to Antminer or if they will sell them to a new provider. If i were in their shoes i would create a new mining company apart from samsung for the miners production.
Let's follow this news closely because i'm sure Bitmain will not stay there just watching.
samsung is an end-product company. usually there is another company behind them that makes the fabricators(the chip machines that make the chips)
one that fabricator makes one, they usually make more and sell the machines for multiple bilions to other companies where other companies rent out the machines to end product businesses to use the machine in their rental time to batch produce whatever chip template the fabricator is handed.
whomever is the fabricator. they would need to price the rental slots in at the right price else places like bitmain wont rent out time to make asics on these.
usually smart product makers wait a few seasons/batches where the fabricator has started getting money in via other corporations, which then reduces the rental costs. so dont expect a winter 2022 batch being 3nm bitmain chips
..
anyways a lower nm means less electric overall. but electric is not a significant chunk of cost for the most economical asics farms
take the $0.04c electric regions.
the 2021 gen of bitmain asics were 110thash at 3.25kwh
EG
$12k hardware = 0.69 an hour (cost spread over 2 years)
13cent electric an hour
=$0.82 an hour cost. (16% electric 84% hardware)
so even if they can make the chips use 45% as much electric. .. if the physical chips are more then an 8th higher than the cost of last gen chips. the math makes them less economical
EG
electric =13cent -45% =~$7cent
if hardware goes up to $0.75 an hour from 0.69 = $13,125 hardware (not spread over two years)
yep if hardware becomes just $1k-$2k more than last gen. then its not cheaper to mine for the most economical miners
however it does play better for the people with higher electric grid costs, but then they are not as efficient anyways but their percentage of electric:hardware moves in their favour
EG
$0.12 grid cost per kw = $0.39 per hour asic electric cost.. vs the 0.69 hardware ($1.08 (36%:64%))
so bringing their electric down from 39cent to 22cent brings their cost down to 91cent which if hardware cost was equal to last gen is a 16% overall cost saving