Qualcomm has will be switching suppliers for its Snapdragon 820 processor away from Taiwan Semiconductor, which is better known as TSMC. Problem with the Snapdragon 810 have made the company rethink its strategy, and it will be engaging Samsung for the next generation processor.
Built on the 20nm process by TSMC, the Snapdragon 810 has experienced overheating issues that has lead to large amounts of throttling. Early reviews of the HTC One M9 also revealed extreme temperatures of over 55-degrees celsius, although that problem has been solved with a software update. Reducing the heat also means reducing the clockspeed on the processor, which greatly limits the performance of the entire device.
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Switching to Samsung would provide Qualcomm with access to a 14nm manufacturing process, which would mean smaller chips with better battery performance. Of course, that would also mean Qualcomm would squeeze more transistors onto the same amount of space. Which would lead to more powerful chips.
Samsung has had a history of supplying electronics to competitors, and it already makes some of the A8 processors that power the Apple iPhone 6. With that in mind, Apple has had concerns that Samsung would be focusing its manufacturing on the Exynos processor for the Galaxy S6 and has switched most of its production over to TSMC.
Qualcomm is preparing for the sampling stage of the Snapdragon 820 later this year. It has also said that would be moving to a more advanced manufacturing process for the new processor, although it has still not revealed more details.
[Souce: Recode]
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