Reports suggest that Samsung produced the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chips, but due to overheating and inefficiency, Qualcomm switched to TSMC, which has since become its exclusive foundry partner.

This pattern will change next year, with regular Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chips continuing to be manufactured by TSMC’s 3nm process N3E, while the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chips for Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S26 series use Samsung’s SF2P process.

Note: Compared with SF3, the SF2 process can improve power consumption efficiency by 25% at the same frequency and complexity, improve performance by 12% at the same power consumption and complexity, and improve performance by 12% at the same performance and complexity. Reduce the area by 5%.

To make the SF2 process more competitive, Samsung will also provide a series of advanced IP portfolio for the process, including LPDDR5x, HBM3P, PCIe Gen6 and 112G SerDes.

SF2P is based on the SF2 process and is optimized for high-performance computing (HPC). It is expected to have greater improvements in performance.

Previous news said that Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 will use the “Pegasus” core, a “2+6” cluster design and the Slice GPU architecture.

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According to China Taiwan’s “Business Times”, Apple’s new MacBook Air, iPad Air/Pro and other product lines are expected to be mass-produced using TSMC’s 3nm N3E process, and the terminal products are expected to be unveiled in the second half of this year or the first half of next year. Stabilize TSMC’s largest customer.

▲ Apple M2 MacBook Air

According to the supply chain, the new phone chips that Qualcomm and MediaTek plan to launch in the second half of this year will continue to use TSMC’s 4-nanometer process for mass production, while the 3-nanometer process may not be adopted until next year.

Although Apple was also simultaneously affected by the cold winter in the consumer market, iPhone revenue in the fourth quarter of last year fell by 8.2% year-on-year, becoming Apple’s first iPhone revenue recession in seven years. But Apple did not stop the process from advancing.

According to previous reports, Apple has contracted almost all 3nm production capacity of TSMC this year, and is expected to enter trial production at the end of the second quarter of this year, and start production in the third quarter, becoming the only three major phone chip manufacturers in the world to advance to 3nm The manufacturer of the process.

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The report claims that Qualcomm is moving away from ARM’s CPU design in favour of its own custom Oryon core solution on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 processor, which can boost multi-core performance by up to 40% compared to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor.

The word is that Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 has two “Nuvia Phoenix” performance cores and six “Nuvia Phoenix M” efficiency cores. Nuvia is the name of the company acquired by Qualcomm to develop custom CPUs.

In a tweet, Revegnus said that the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 scored 1800 points in single-core performance and 6500 points in multi-core performance in the Geekbench 5 benchmark test.

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 has a single-core performance of 2070 and a multi-core performance of 9100 in the GeekBench 5 benchmark test, while the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 has a multi-core performance of 2070 and a multi-core performance of 9100 in the same test, and the M2 has a multi-core score of 8800 to 9000 in GeekBench 5.

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Dan Kochpatcharin, head of TSMC’s design infrastructure management department, said that Synopsys’ latest achievements in electronic design automation (EDA) and IP on TSMC’s N3E process technology bring powerful solutions to mutual customers to help them meet innovative designs. stringent power, performance, and area targets.

TSMC’s 3-nanometer process will be mass-produced this quarter (Q4). TSMC President Wei Zhejia previously stated that the N3E technology development progress is ahead of schedule and is expected to be mass-produced in the second half of 2023.

Synopsys is an American electronic design automation company and IC interface IP supplier, focusing on chip design and verification, chip intellectual property and computer security, and has nothing to do with Cisco.

Sanjay Bali, vice president of marketing strategy for Synopsys’ Silicon Realization Group, said the recent results represent another important milestone in the continued successful collaboration between Synopsys and TSMC, bringing designers a way to meet their key design requirements.

Synopsys said TSMC’s N3E process expands its 3nm process family with better power consumption, performance and yield for workload-intensive applications such as high-performance computing, AI artificial intelligence and mobility.

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In addition, because Apple is not satisfied with the performance of the first project based on the N3 process Ibiza performance, Apple has canceled it, so users will not see the end product to build a 3nm M3 chip in the short term.

Apple has started work on the core design of “M3”, which will be released in the second half of 2023 at the earliest.

The chip, internally codenamed “Malma”, will be based on TSMC’s N3E for mass production. Compared to the N5, the N3 offers up to 15% performance improvement and up to 30% energy efficiency improvement, and the N3E will further extend these differences.

In addition, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said Apple suppliers will begin mass production of the new 14-inch MacBook Pro, 16-inch MacBook Pro and iPad Pro models in the fourth quarter of 2022, and that all devices will likely continue to be equipped with 5nm chips.

He said that Apple’s chip manufacturing partner TSMC will not start shipping 3nm chips until January 2023, so he expects the new MacBook Pro and iPad Pro models to stick with 5nm chips.

The new iPad Pro with the M2 chip is expected to be released in October, but the release date for the new MacBook Pro models is not yet clear. It has been rumored that the new MacBook Pro will be released later this year, but there are also some rumors pointing to a 2023 release.

The new MacBook Pro is expected to come with the M2 Pro and M2 Max chips, which are still expected to be 5nm process. In addition to future Macs and iPads, the A17 Bionic chip in next year’s iPhone 15 Pro is also expected to be equipped with a 3nm chip, so stay tuned.

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However, TSMC has grabbed the main customers does not mean that there is no hidden worry, originally Intel is also one of the two major customers of TSMC 3nm debut, but not long ago there was news that Intel canceled the order, 14 generations of Core on the GPU module using the 5nm process, did not use TSMC 3nm process.

However, the fact that TSMC has grabbed major customers does not mean that there are no worries. Originally, Intel was also one of the two major customers of TSMC’s 3nm launch. However, it was reported not long ago that Intel canceled the order, and the GPU module on the 14th generation Core uses a 5nm process. , did not use TSMC’s 3nm process.

Now, Apple, the only customer of TSMC’s 3nm process, has also been shaken. A source from the industry chain @Mobile Chip Daren broke the news that TSMC’s N3 process has been abandoned internally, because customers don’t need it, and Apple has also given up.

But N3 process was abandoned, which does not mean that TSMC’s 3nm process is finished, in fact, N3 is only the first generation of the 3nm process, compared to the N5 process power consumption can be reduced by about 25-30%, performance can be improved by 10-15%, transistor density increased by about 70%.

However, the N3 process has a narrow range of applications and is only suitable for manufacturing specific products for early customers with superb investment capabilities and the pursuit of new processes.

In short, the initial generation of N3 process performance and density is very good, but too expensive, only suitable for the dirt-cheap customers willing to burn money, such as Apple, Intel, the results of these two have not been used.

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However, after 3nm, TSMC will launch an upgraded version of N3E process next year, that is, 3nm Enhanced, to further improve performance, reduce power consumption, and expand the scope of applications, compared to N5 with the same performance and density of power consumption by 34%, the same power and density of performance by 18%, or can increase the transistor density by 60%.

The analysts at the Business Times believe that the N3E process will become the mainstay of production discussions among major manufacturers, including Apple’s iPhone 15 series A17 processor, the next generation of M3 processors, and AMD’s future Zen5, among others.

M3 is said to be used in products such as the MacBook Air, and Apple is likely to increase the display size of this model to improve cooling through stronger cooling solutions. Other potential products include a newer iPad Pro line, as well as a newer iMac, and possibly a future iPad Air. M3 will likely use 4 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores again, just like M2 and M1.

As a matter of industry practice, TSMC will test the performance and trial yields of the N3E process first this year, with mass production expected in the second half of 2023. Corelist+ has leaked an internal TSMC PPT showing that its N3E process is progressing very well, at least in terms of yield.

The PPT shows that TSMC’s next-generation N3E process yields exceeded expectations, with the average yield of N3E’s 256Mb SRAM at about 80%, mobile devices and HPC chips at about 80%, and ring oscillator yields even exceeding 92%.

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TSMC’s 3nm process to the second version of the N3E process next year, that is, 3nm Enhanced enhanced version, on the basis of N3 to improve performance, reduce power consumption, expand the scope of applications, compared to N5 the same performance and density of power consumption by 34%, the same power consumption and density of performance by 18%, or can be transistor density by 60%.

Although the density may be such as the first generation of N3, the N3E process will be the main force used by the major manufacturers to discuss production, including Apple’s new generation of processors, such as the iPhone 15’s 17 processors, the next generation of M3 processors, and AMD’s future Zen5 and so on.

N3E process is expected to mass production in the second half of 2023, there will be trial production this year, a few days ago a leaked internal PPT shows TSMC’s N3E process progress is very good, the yield rate is pleasing.

The N3E process produces 256Mb SRAM chips with yields of up to 80%, mobile and HPC chips with yields of 80%, and ring oscillators with yields of even 92%.

Of course, these are some relatively simple chips, high yields are normal, the actual processor contains very complex circuit units, and yields will continue to polish, but TSMC 3nm process is not as aggressive as Samsung, the overall or very stable.

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