Digital Chinese New Year Challenge
In recent years, the competition in the mobile phone market has indeed been very fierce, but for chip manufacturers, today's development pressure can also be described as exaggerated.
In particular, the competition between MediaTek and Qualcomm Snapdragon has made the choice of major mobile phone manufacturers very tangled, and they don't know which one to support.
But for consumers, no matter which chip it is, as long as the performance is strong enough and the power consumption control is good enough, then there is no problem in choosing which one.
It's just that there was news in the market that the Snapdragon 8 Gen5 processor would use TSMC and Samsung processes when it was used, and then the user chose to do it
Because Samsung's 3nm GAA process is the company's most advanced chip manufacturing technology, it uses a gate-all-around transistor structure, which can achieve higher integration and lower power consumption than traditional FinFET structures.
In terms of TSMC, although the 3nm FinFET process will be mass-produced in 2023, it is still slightly weaker in terms of process advantages with Samsung.
That's why there is news that Qualcomm Snapdragon wants to adopt it on both sides, and feels that Samsung's process has become very stable, but the results are not good.
The reason is that there is news that Samsung's 3nm yield rate is too low, or it is difficult to be adopted, and it can even be described as "0% yield rate".
According to the news, the Exynos 2500 chip with 3nm process failed the quality test due to defects, resulting in the subsequent Galaxy Watch 7 chipset also unable to achieve mass production.
Moreover, Korean media Dealsite+ published an article saying that Samsung's 3nm GAA process has encountered difficult birth, and the current yield rate of the trial-produced Exynos 2500 chip is "0%", which can neither meet the needs of the next generation of Galaxy S25 series mobile phones.
From this point of view, the Snapdragon 8 Gen5 processor should not use Samsung's process, at least this yield rate is really low at present.
Unless Samsung's 3nm process can reach a certain level of perfection in 2024, the follow-up development pressure will really be very large.
What needs to be understood is that a ** who is familiar with Samsung's plan said that unless the yield rate of 70% is reached, it will be difficult to obtain customers such as Qualcomm.
Even Samsung's own LSI division, which designs chipsets and modems for a variety of applications, may not take orders if production remains low.
The reason is that companies like Qualcomm have to pay full price for this batch of wafers, including defective wafers, and Qualcomm is forced to pay for all 10 wafers if only 5 out of 10 wafers are considered usable at 50% yield.
This is difficult for any company to accept this situation, not to mention that Qualcomm Snapdragon has previously turned over on the Samsung process, so it is naturally difficult to support.
In addition, it should be said that the next changes in the Snapdragon processor are quite large, such as the Snapdragon 8 Gen4 will use a self-developed architecture to exert force.
It uses the Phoenix core designed by Nuvbia, which it has acquired. The chip uses an 8-core design, including 2 Nuvia Phoenix L cores and 6 Nuvia Phoenix M cores, which is similar to the Dimensity 9300's all-large-core design.
Moreover, the TSMC N3E process is used, which is better than the Apple A17Pro, which uses the N3B process, which also reassures many people, after all, A17Pro has the problem of heat generation and poor energy efficiency.
Therefore, as long as the process is stable, it will be difficult for the Snapdragon 8 Gen4 processor to overturn, which is the same result for the Snapdragon 8 Gen5 processor.
For Samsung, in addition to Samsung's process, Samsung's chips also need to be strengthened to gain a foothold.
Among them, the Exynos 2500 is a flagship mobile processor planned by Samsung, which uses a 10-core CPU architecture in the previous leaks.
This includes the new Cortex-X5 and Cortex-A730 cores, which offer a significant performance improvement over the Cortex-X4 and Cortex-A720 of the previous generation Exynos 2400.
It's just that at present, Samsung's mobile phone has a low influence in the domestic market, and it is also very difficult to make the influence of the chip generate high heat.
Finally, I want to say that Samsung's process is currently a very difficult and stressful key, and if it can't make a good breakthrough, it's really hard to say how the future development will be.
Is there anything you would like to express about this? Feel free to reply to the discussion.