Blogger Digital Chat site revealed that Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen3 to be released at the end of the year will still be manufactured by Taiwan Semiconductor, using its N4P process. Informant Kartikey Singh also said that Qualcomm will not return to Samsung’s embrace in the short term, the Snapdragon 8 Gen3 this time without Samsung 3nm technology.
The TSMC N4P process offers an 11% performance improvement over the original N5 process, or a 22% increase in energy efficiency and a 6% increase in transistor density, compared to the N4 process, which offers a 6.6% increase in performance.
At the same time, the N4P process offers more PPA (power, performance, area) benefits as the previous N4 process, but maintains the same design rules, design infrastructure, SPICE simulation program, and IP. In addition, in the N4P process, Taiwan Semiconductor Semiconductor reduces the number of masks to reduce the complexity of the process, shorten the cycle, and accelerate the wafer production speed.
As for why Qualcomm didn’t directly launch 3nm from TSMC, industry insiders analyzed that compared with 3nm, the improved 4nm process technology based on 5nm process is relatively stable. At the same time, because the process technology is relatively mature, the production cost is relatively controllable, so it is relatively safe to use this process to produce Qualcomm’s next type of processor.
Read Also: Creality CR-SCAN Lizard Review – Premium Portable 3D Scanner at €440.64 From TOMTOP with Coupon
However, in general, 4nm is a transitional process, and 3nm is the main node after 5nm. Apple’s A17 chips and M3 chips to be released in the second half of this year are likely to use TSMC’s 3nm process.