Qualcomm unveiled its next-generation flagship smartphone chipset, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, earlier this week. While the company had announced that the chipset is made using a 4nm process, it had not revealed which company is manufacturing it. Now, Qualcomm executives have confirmed that the chipset is being fabricated by Samsung Foundry.
Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon revealed yesterday during a Q&A session at the company's annual summit that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 is made by Samsung Foundry on its latest 4nm process. Meanwhile, Alex Katouzian, SVP and General Manager of Qualcomm's Mobile, Compute, and Infrastructure business, said to reporters in South Korea that the new flagship Snapdragon chip isn't made by TSMC.
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 will compete with Apple's A15 Bionic, MediaTek's Dimensity 9000, and Samsung's Exynos 2200 smartphone chipsets. Both A15 Bionic and Dimensity 9000 are made by TSMC, Samsung Foundry's primary rival and the world's biggest chip contract manufacturer. The Exynos 2200 and the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 are made by Samsung Foundry's 4nm process. TSMC's 4nm process is said to be more efficient than Samsung's 4nm tech.
Apple uses a majority of TSMC's semiconductor production capacity to make A15 Bionic, M1, M1 Pro, and M1 Max chipsets for iPhones, iPads, and Macs. The remaining capacity is used to manufacture the Dimensity 9000. Hence, Qualcomm may have had to use Samsung Foundry to manufacture the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1.
The Galaxy S22, which will be launched in February 2022, will use the Exynos 2200 in some countries and the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 in other regions. While the Exynos 2200 hasn't been officially unveiled yet, it is expected to feature a CPU structure that's similar to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 and the Dimensity 9000. All three chipsets use ARM's new CPU cores: Cortex-X2, Cortex-A710, and Cortex-A510.
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