After reportedly losing the deal to TSMC for making 5nm chips for Qualcomm last month, Samsung has something to be happy about. According to a new report, the South Korean chip manufacturing firm has clinched a deal to make entry-level Qualcomm processors for 5G smartphones.
It is being said that Samsung will manufacture Snapdragon 4xx series application processors with 5G connectivity. Qualcomm had announced last week during its IFA 2020 keynote that it will bring 5G to affordable smartphones with its upcoming Snapdragon 4xx series chipsets. Christiano Amon, Qualcomm's president, said that the company's new affordable 5G chips will start appearing in smartphones in 2021.
Motorola, OPPO, and Xiaomi have already announced that they will launch 5G smartphones powered by Qualcomm's upcoming Snapdragon 4xx series chipsets. Over the past few months, Samsung has managed to win orders from IBM and Nvidia. The company will make IBM's POWER 10 chips and Nvidia's Ampere-based chips that are used in the RTX 3000 series GPUs.
Although Samsung is the world's largest memory chip maker, it trails behind TSMC when it comes to manufacturing application processors using cutting-edge fabrication technologies. The South Korean firm is a few months behind TSMC when it comes to the 5nm process. TSMC has bagged orders to make Apple's A14 chipset that will be used in the iPhone 12 series and Qualcomm's 5nm chips for next year's smartphones.
