Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 to be manfactured exclusively by TSMC

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 marks an important milestone in Qualcomm's smartphone AP roadmap as it will be the first to run its indigenously developed Oryon cores. The rumour mill has been divided about who will fabricate it. One source says it's TSMC, another said it would be Samsung, while a third said it will be dual-sourced from TSMC and Samsung. A Taiwanese news outlet now says it will be the former.

It also states that reports about Qualcomm looking to dual-source the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 weren't unfounded. However, the chipmaker was forced to pick TSMC's N3E process due to capacity and yield issues with Samsung's 3 GAP node. One can't blame Samsung, as it will undoubtedly prioritize its in-house Exynos 2500 (or Dream Chip, depending on who you ask) over its competitor.

That said, Qualcomm may have to pay TSMC a premium for its N3E fab space, primarily because Apple has called dibs on the lion's share of its capacity. Intel and MediaTek also plan to manufacture some components on TSMC N3E, further limiting its available bandwidth.

That may be why Qualcomm announced it would be dual-sourcing SoCs from Samsung and TSMC, with the former being used for mid-range SKUs and the latter for high-end. Smartphones (US$899 on Amazon) running the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 are slated to get even more expensive, something Qualcomm hinted at during the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 launch.