Samsung Will Produce Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820 SoC

[dgstorm]

When you are the top dog, everyone is gunning for you, but sometimes that just doesn't matter. In this case, Samsung has demonstrated that its next generation "2nd-Gen 14nm FinFet power process" is ready for mass production and no-one else can match it. Because of that, not only will Sammy be building their own Exynos 8 Octa SoCs, they will also be making Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820 for them.

Samsung announced the news in an official press release. Apparently, the technological gains were so great from Samsung's advanced process that this was Qualcomm's best choice over-all. In the long-run, we bet Qualcomm is quite happy about this because it means they have regained one of their largest customers.

Samsung's new chipset manufacturing process helps Samsung push more power with less circuitry, reducing overall energy consumption to the tune of around 15% both ways. This is achieved because the 14nm FinFet process uses a 3D structure for its transistors. Here's a quote from the press release,

“We are pleased to start production of our industry-leading, 2nd generation 14nm FinFET process technology that delivers the highest level of performance and power efficiency” said Charlie Bae, Executive Vice President of Sales & Marketing, System LSI Business, Samsung Electronics. “Samsung will continue to offer derivative processes of its advanced 14nm FinFET technology to maintain our technology leadership.”

 

[Narsil]

So how is it that Samsung cannot produce enough Exynos chips to put them in US devices and must purchase Snapdragon processors to fill the gap but now they can produce both Exynos processors and the Snapdragons as well?

 

[Jeffrey]

So how is it that Samsung cannot produce enough Exynos chips to put them in US devices and must purchase Snapdragon processors to fill the gap but now they can produce both Exynos processors and the Snapdragons as well?

I don't think it has anything to do with production. Sammy buys Snapdragon SoC's for the US and China markest only.

Industry sources speculate that Qualcomm was able to secure Snapdragon 820 orders for the two most profitable markets by using its chip manufacturing orders as a negotiation argument. Put simply, Samsung gets lucrative chip foundry contracts from Qualcomm, and Qualcomm gets chip orders from Samsung.