With the release of the two chips of Tianji 8100 and 8000, coupled with the escort of Tianji's flagship product of Tianji 9000 with TSMC's 4nm process + Arm V9 architecture, it can be said that competitor Qualcomm Snapdragon is doubly anxious. However, according to the exposure of digital blogger information, the snapdragon flagship SoC that is expected to be released in the second half of this year and next year, Qualcomm will let TSMC OEM production, in terms of power consumption has dropped significantly, perhaps allowing users to have expectations.
The main reason why Qualcomm Snapdragon switched to TSMC OEM is the low yield of Samsung. It is reported that taking the Snapdragon 8 Gen1 Plus (expected to release flagship chips in the second half of the year) as an example, from the third quarter, TSMC has produced more than 50,000 pieces per quarter, and the current yield has exceeded 70%, which is much higher than the Snapdragon 8 Gen1 of Samsung OEM.
In addition, the new generation of 5G modem Snapdragon X70 released by Qualcomm, its biggest feature is to support 10Gbps 5G peak download speed, but also brings advanced experiences such as Qualcomm 5G AI suite, Qualcomm 5G ultra-low latency suite and quad carrier aggregation. The Snapdragon X70 is likely to be integrated into the Snapdragon 8 Gen2, making it the strongest 5G chip. Therefore, in the face of such an important product, it may be wiser to hand it over to TSMC.
In the face of more advanced processes below 5nm, it is difficult to smoothly produce high yields, even TSMC. Not only is it difficult to overcome the process technology, but also to double the cost investment.
It is reported that the 12-inch wafer price of TSMC's 7nm process OEM is about 9300 US dollars, the 5nm process OEM price is about 17000 US dollars, and the 3nm process will be further increased to 30000 US dollars. In this way, the price increase of downstream landing products is inevitable.
Then, while we cheer snapdragon's new generation of flagship SoCs with reduced power consumption and more stable performance, how to price will test Qualcomm's conscience.