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Samsung Galaxy S6

Qualcomm has confirmed that it will use Samsung's 14nm LPP (Low Power Plus) process for its Snapdragon 820 SoC. This will be the starting time time the mobile giant has used Samsung for a cutting-edge node. Historically, TSMC has led the pure-play foundry business in deploying new manufacturing technologies, and therefore won the overwhelming bulk of business for each dice shrink.

Unlike Apple, which dual-sourced its SoCs from both Samsung and TSMC, Qualcomm is apparently sticking with just the Korean manufacturer, at to the lowest degree for the loftier-end 820. This will undoubtedly save on costs, merely it does raise questions of whether or not Samsung's 14nm LPP is upward to the task or not. The iPhone 6s uses processors from both companies, and while real-world testing revealed that they earn equivalent battery life, specific stress tights highlighted that the Samsung chip, while smaller, is also hotter and a bigger drain on the battery.

Volition Qualcomm win back Samsung?

1 major question is whether a manufacturing deal means Qualcomm volition win the upcoming Samsung Milky way S7. The answer here, I think, is no — if Samsung goes for the Snapdragon 820 in the S7, it will be for performance and power efficiency reasons, not any kind of manufacturing arrangement. Samsung, after all, connected to fab SoCs and displays for Apple, even equally the Cupertino company took information technology to court over patent infringements.

Snapdragon820-2

Qualcomm's power consumption in "real life" workloads.

Fabs are incredibly expensive, with substantial stock-still costs and long lead times. Idling a fab is a proficient fashion to kill your bottom line, and if Samsung is serious virtually continuing to compete with TSMC at cutting-border nodes, information technology needs to keep its existing fabs running hot. The visitor has also historically been rather agnostic when it comes to which companies it uses for its devices — if Samsung believes it can get a more attractive product with the Snapdragon 820, it'll likely utilize that core. If the metrics, costs, and time-to-market favor adjacent-generation Exynos instead, it'll use an Exynos design.

The real loser, in this case, is TSMC. It'south now sharing Apple business with Samsung, and it failed to capture Qualcomm's business organization at 16nm. The company will easily survive such arrangements, simply we await the Taiwanese foundry to push button hard for 10nm — it'll try to cut Samsung off at the knees by existence first to that node, stopping its competitor from soaking up the most profitable early business.

Devices with the Snapdragon 820 are expected to debut in the first one-half of this yr.