Qualcomm partnered with Samsung to produce this year’s Snapdragon 835 SoC which was built on latter’s 10nm FinFET process. It seems like Qualcomm has put an end to this partnership and has chosen TSMC to build its next-generation 7nm application processor.
According to a new report originating from Korea, Qualcomm seems to have joined forces with TSMC and has reportedly started working on the 7nm Snapdragon SoC with the tools distributed by TSMC sometime in the second half of 2016.
The report also suggests that Qualcomm intends to mass produce the 7nm Snapdragon chipsets by early next year after the first test wafer is manufactured from TSMC this September.
Samsung foundry apparently reported $4.14 billion sales last year out of which $1.78 billion (40%) were generated by producing Qualcomm’s APs. Now, that’s a significant loss. But again, the Snapdragon 835 chipsets will still be in the market for a while and not to mention the 10nm process will be used for mid-range chips as well.
Read: Some details on Snapdragon 845 processor leaked out!
The end of the partnership with Qualcomm comes as the second major blow for Samsung this year as it had also lost the contract from Apple to produce the APs for the upcoming iPhone.
Both these losses can be attributed to the delay in development of 7nm chipsets by Samsung. The company believed the 10nm process to last long, but that doesn’t seem to be the case, at least, as far as flagship handsets are concerned.
Read: Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 836 processor might debut with Galaxy Note 8
The company, however, added the 8nm process recently as an intermediate between the 10nm process and 7nm process. The 8nm process is considered to be a minor upgraded version of the 10nm process.
Samsung is expected to mass produce the 7nm chipsets probably in the second half of 2017. And the beta version of the same is supposed to be out in July this year.
Source: Fudzilla
