Qualcomm reportedly ditches Intel 20A in favour of TSMC and Samsung

Even though IFS (Intel Foundry Services) doesn't have any external clients now, its future was looking promising after it announced its collaboration with Arm to manufacture reference chips on its 2025-bound 18A node. However, according to a report from industry analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, its predecessor, Intel 20A, has lost one major player in Qualcomm. It could prove troublesome for IFS as a high-profile player often helps bolster R&D efforts for future offerings.

It will instead go with TSMC and Samsung Foundry for its 2024 (and beyond) mobile SoC needs. It isn't surprising because Qualcomm has already worked with both companies in various capacities over the past few years. Additionally, the upcoming Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 is said to be manufactured on TSMC's N4P node. Kuo mentions Qualcomm may have to dual-source from TSMC and Samsung Foundry.

This is further substantiated by an earlier report which stated the Samsung-only Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 for Galaxy could be manufactured on Samsung's 3GAP node. At the same time, the regular Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 will use TSMC's N3E node.

While dual sourcing is an effective cost-saving measure, it ended poorly for Apple with the infamous Chipgate scandal. Qualcomm has far more at stake here as the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 is rumoured to be the first chip to use its indigenously developed Nuvia CPU cores.

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