Qualcomm has often switched between the two top independent foundries in the world, TSMC, and Samsung, to build its flagship Snapdragon chips. The Snapdragon 845 SoC was built by Samsung using its 10nm process node. Both the Snapdragon 855 and 865 mobile platforms were manufactured by TSMC using its 7nm and advanced 7nm process nodes respectively.
The Elec's report says Qualcomm wants to launch the"Plus" version of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 earlier than usual this year and production of that 4nm chip has been assigned to TSMC. That component could be ready to ship sometime in the second quarter. We added that"If Qualcomm does decide to split production of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, it could result in some devices exhibiting performance and/or power efficiency differences with other devices even if they both use the same chipset." Qualcomm plans to continue using Samsung Foundry to build Radio Frequency chips using the 7nm process node.