Qualcomm may switch to TSMC 4nm process in the Snapdragon 895 Plus

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Earlier, there was news that the Qualcomm Snapdragon 895, codenamed SM8450, will be manufactured using Samsung’s 4nm process. Qualcomm chose Samsung to meet the demand for production capacity. This is also one of the reasons for abandoning TSMC. I believe that Samsung will also give Qualcomm a very favorable price. Since it was reported that Qualcomm and TSMC have reached an agreement, after signing a new order, many people expect that high-end Snapdragon chips will return to TSMC production. This is also in line with Qualcomm’s long-standing strategy of replacing them in due course. The foundry ensures the capacity and profit it needs.

It is understood that Qualcomm Snapdragon 895 will use the core of the Armv9 architecture, each is a Kryo 780 Prime (Cortex-X2), three Kryo 780 Gold (Cortex-A710), and four Kryo 780 Silver (Cortex-A510). GPU is Adreno 730. VPU and DPU are Adreno 665 and Adreno 1195 respectively, further improve machine learning capabilities and enhance security. At the same time, it is equipped with the Snapdragon X65 5G baseband, which provides a data transmission speed of up to 10Gbps, which is higher than the 7.5Gbps of the Snapdragon X60.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 895

Recently, Twitter user @Ice Universe revealed that Qualcomm does intend to return high-end Snapdragon chips to TSMC manufacturing, but not Snapdragon 895 but Snapdragon 895 Plus. It is rumored that TSMC’s tight capacity is one of the reasons for delaying Qualcomm’s orders, and TSMC is more inclined to prioritize limited capacity to Apple. Qualcomm is likely to be able to get TSMC’s 4nm process capacity in the second half of 2022, which also shows that the chip shortage is gradually disappearing. Of course, if TSMC’s production capacity is still tight, Qualcomm may continue to look for Samsung foundry.

It is expected that Qualcomm will release the Snapdragon 895 in December this year, and will launch the Snapdragon 895 Plus around the middle of next year. There is still uncertainty during this period.

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