Qualcomm confirmed on Wednesday that it was solely using Samsung Foundry to manufacture its new Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor.
Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon confirmed that it was using the South Korean tech giant’s 4-nanometer (nm) process node to manufacture its latest chip when asked during a Q and A session at its media event.
Meanwhile, Alex Katouzian, the senior vice president and general manager of the Mobile, Compute and Infrastructure business unit at Qualcomm, told reporters at South Korea in a separate interview that it was not using TSMC to manufacture Snapdragon 8 Gen 1.
These confirmations from the Qualcomm executives indicate that Samsung Foundry is currently the sole contract manufacturer of the new 4nm chip.
Qualcomm, along with Apple, is a major customer for chip foundry companies as it orders in large quantities.
Winning orders from them in the latest process node usually indicates that the particular foundry company’s technology is more advanced than its competitor, as Qualcomm and Apple order the best technology available for them.
However, TSMC could just be facing a bottleneck in terms of capacity to handle its large order from Apple, a person familiar with the matter said.
Samsung Foundry recently lost some orders from Nvidia to contract-produce GPUs, which means it had more capacity available to handle Qualcomm’s orders, they said.
Apple, besides its existing A series of processors for smartphones, is expanding production of its M series of processors for PCs, which it gives the production contract to TSMC.
