Samsung is one of the largest companies in the world. While most of us are familiar with their popular consumer electronics products such as smartphones, the South Korean technology giant operates in many other areas. One of these areas is the production of processors. Samsung produces processors for various developers, including Qualcomm. Unfortunately, it appears that there are some issues in this area. Here are the details…

Samsung loses manufacturing contract for one more Qualcomm chip

Samsung has suffered another blow in its contract chip manufacturing business. Qualcomm has chosen to manufacture its latest processor, the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 1, using TSMC’s 4nm process instead of Samsung Foundry’s 4nm LPE process. This decision comes as no surprise as Samsung Foundry has been facing efficiency and yield issues in recent years.

TSMC’s 4nm process has proven to be more efficient, which means that the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 1 will be more power efficient than its predecessor. The processor is set to be unveiled at Qualcomm’s launch event on March 17, 2023, and is expected to bring faster performance and efficiency.

The chip features one Cortex-X2 CPU core clocked at 2.92GHz, three Cortex-A710 CPU cores clocked at 2.5GHz, and four Cortex-A510 CPU cores running at a maximum frequency of 1.8GHz. It also features the Adreno 725 GPU clocked at 580MHz. The chip is an underclocked version of the popular Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 processor and is the first time a Cortex-X series CPU is used in a Snapdragon 7 series chip.

Leaked benchmarks reveal that the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 1 scores 1,232 points in Geekbench’s single-core CPU test and 4,095 points in the multi-core CPU test. This is almost as good as the MediaTek Dimensity 9000, which was close to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. The new chip is expected to make premium mid-range phones as fast as last year’s flagship phones.

While Samsung’s 4nm and 5nm nodes have faced issues, rumors suggest that its 3nm GAA is much better and could be superior to TSMC’s 3nm process. Some rumors also claim that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 will use Samsung Foundry’s 3nm GAA, but this claim should be taken with a grain of salt.

The loss of the manufacturing contract for the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 1 is a significant setback for Samsung’s contract chip manufacturing business. However, the company still has its 3nm GAA process, which could potentially attract future clients. Samsung will need to work on improving its processes and addressing the efficiency and yield issues it has faced to remain competitive in the contract chip manufacturing market.

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After switching over from Samsung’s 4nm foundry to TSMC’s 4nm semiconductor production foundry, the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 SoC manufactured on TSMC’s 4nm advanced node process showed significantly better CPU performance, better GPU performance alongside much-improved power efficiency, and thermals compared its peers, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, Snapdragon 888+ and Snapdragon 888 SoCs that were manufactured on Samsung’s 4nm and 5nm node process.

Thus, after getting flak and bad press coverage of the overheating and quality control issues for its previous flagship SoCs, Qualcomm did announce that it will be ditching Samsung and moving forward with TSMC only for its flagship SoCs, specifically the Snapdragon 8 series of SoCs. 

And in a recent report by Chinese technology leakster, Digital Chat Station on Weibo, they shared the news that Qualcomm and MediaTek’s upcoming next-generation smartphone SoCs will be manufactured via TSMC’s foundry.

The Weibo post states that there will be 4 upcoming smartphone SoCs that will be manufactured by TSMC, which are respectively the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, MediaTek Dimensity 9100, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 2, and the MediaTek Dimensity 8200.

According to industry insiders, the development of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is faster than the MediaTek Dimensity 9100 within TSMC, whilst the development of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 2 is faster than the MediaTek Dimensity 8200 within TSMC.

Both the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and Dimensity 9100 SoC are said to present in many Android flagships that are to be announced in 2023, while the Snapdragon 7 Gen 2 and MediaTek Dimensity 8200 SoCs will be catered to the mid-range Android market.

The report also states that the Snapdragon 7 Gen 2 is to be an iterative upgrade over the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1, with little to no changes to the core layout nor ISPs, and the major difference would be the switch from Samsung’s 4nm process on the 7 Gen 1, to TSMC’s 4nm process on the 7 Gen 2. And due to the fact that the next-generation Snapdragon 7 is an iterative upgrade, it could be instead called the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 1 instead of the Snapdragon 7 Gen 2.

As for the popularity of the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1, it is only featured on one smartphone in the market, which is the Oppo Reno 8 Pro mid-range smartphone that is exclusive to China. Presumably because of the bad reputation of Qualcomm’s SoCs that are manufactured by Samsung, the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 isn’t garnering a lot of customers among Android smartphone manufacturers, whilst the Snapdragon 778G and 778G+ which are under TSMC’s 6nm foundry seem to be the more prevalent choice for Android smartphone makers instead.

If you fancy picking up a power-efficient Snapdragon 778G+ smartphone yourself, there are 3 options you should consider: the Honor 70 which was launched in IFA Berlin 2022 last week, the Nothing Phone (1) announced by OnePlus founder Carl Pei, and the Motorola Edge 30 which has stock Android software with minimal bloatware for users.

The Nothing Phone (1) is on sale today starting from only US$499 on Giztop.

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(Source)

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