Samsung Bags The Right To Manufacture Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 SoC

It is a well-documented fact that Samsung is a high-end smartphone maker. Only a few people know that the company is also capable of designing and manufacturing electronic components like chipsets, camera modules, and displays. According to the latest report, Samsung has bagged the rights to mass produce the upcoming Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 SoC.

Though Qualcomm designs the Snapdragon series of chipsets, the US-based chipset company does not have resources to manufacture or mass produce chipsets yet. Qualcomm outsources the chipset manufacturing to a third party like Samsung or TSMC.

Qualcomm's Snapdragon 845 and the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 chipsets were manufactured by TSMC, and now, Qualcomm is going back to Samsung to manufacture the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 SoC using 7nm EUV technology, which is slightly advanced compared to the 7nm node manufacturing technology used by TSMC.

Two iterations of Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 SoC

According to a leak, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 SoC will be available in two variants. The standard variant will come with an LTE modem, whereas, the high-end variant will feature the Snapdragon X55 5G modem. Do note the fact that Samsung did manufacture the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 and the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 SoC, based on 10nm manufacturing architecture in 2016 and 2017, respectively.

With the two chipsets, the OEM will have a choice to launch the smartphone with or without 5G connectivity, and the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 with Snapdragon X55 SoC is likely to cost more than LTE variant of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 SoC.

What do we think about this move from Qualcomm?

Samsung is pretty experienced when it comes to chipset manufacturing, in fact, the company has also manufactured a couple of chipsets for Apple iPhone, and the in-house Exynos chipsets are also manufactured by Samsung itself.

As of now, there is no information on how 7nm EUV manufacturing technology will help users/OEM compared to the 7nm node used by TSMC. The chipset is expected to go live by the end of 2019, and stay tuned to GizBot to learn more about the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 SoC.

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