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Qualcomm launched the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset in October. The flagship chipset will power multiple high-end Android phones in 2024. During the launch, the company also shared a few details about the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 chipset which is expected to be launched next year. Some more details about the upcoming chipset have also been leaked on the internet.
In May, a report claimed that the US-based chip maker is planning to adopt a dual-sourcing strategy for the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 chipset. This means that the company was planning to source their chips from both long-term suppliers TSMC as well as Samsung. According to a report by Taiwanese publication Tech News, Qualcomm has decided against appointing Samsung as a supplier for its chips. Instead, the company will rely solely on TSMC to produce its next-generation smartphone chipset.
Why Qualcomm doesn’t want Samsung as a supplier
The report notes that Qualcomm’s decision against using Samsung might be due to its “unstable yields” and a “conservative” expansion strategy. This means that the Snapdragon chip designer wasn’t convinced that Samsung could provide the combination of volume, cost, and performance it is seeking.
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 is expected to be manufactured on a 3nm process. However, it’s too early to tell whether TSMC’s 3nm manufacturing process is better than Samsung’s. It is important to note that in the last few years, TSMC has had the upper hand over Samsung.
To compare, the vanilla Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 which was manufactured on a 4nm Samsung process faced throttling issues. Meanwhile, the TSMC-made Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 delivered much better performance and improved efficiency significantly.
Qualcomm has already revealed that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 chipset is set to be the first to come powered by custom Oryon CPU cores. So, the company doesn’t want to compromise the chip’s performance due to a problematic manufacturing process.
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