Samsung foundries, the chip manufacturing branch of the Korean conglomerate has bagged a high end customer who is expected to generate a revenue figure of over $1 billion. The said customer is QUALCOMM and it has announced that the snapdragon 820 superchip will be manufactured solely by Samsung foundries.
Qualcomm reached this decision at due to the superior manufacturing process employed by Samsung foundries that promises superior performance all the while consuming less power. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd (TSMC) was the manufacturer for the other high end chips from QUALCOMM and this time it seems to have lost the deal to Samsung foundries.
But other soc like the snapdragon 625 and 410 are still manufactured by the TMSC.
“This is very significant because never before has Qualcomm used foundries other than TSMC to make high-end chipsets,” Maybank Kim Eng analyst Warren Lau said
Samsung foundries employs the 14nm FinFET production process while the TMSC uses the 16 nm. This basically allowed the snapdragon 820 to consume 15% less power and a speed increase of 15%. All this comes in a smaller die package than before.
The nm represents the transistor size and decreasing this size allowed Samsung foundries to fit the same soc package in a smaller area. Samsung foundries developed this process for its own exynos 8890 soc but other seems to have noticed the benefits.
It is also reported that apple is in talks with Samsung foundries to manufacture the next generation A10 processors that powers the upcoming iPhone and iPad because of the same technology.
This is good news for Samsung. Its smartphone empire is tumbling but the display and the chip manufacturing division are generating unexpected profits giving some relief to the investors.
Samsung also plans to use this snapdragon 820 chip-set in the upcoming Galaxy S7 and most likely in the Note 6.
