Demand will outpace supply until 2013 for Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 chip
Supply of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 processor will have trouble meeting its demand for the foreseeable future, according to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, whose 28nm foundry has been contracted to produce the chips. The Snapdragon S4 has become the go-to option for nearly all recent high-end LTE devices, including the Samsung Galaxy S III, HTC One X and One S, and the ASUS Padfone, which already experienced a short delay due to limited availability of the CPU hardware.
TSMC sees supply and demand steadying out by 2013, while Qualcomm hopes meet be able to fully meet the needs of OEMs slightly sooner in late 2012. The introduction of next-gen quad-core processors with LTE support should help to divert some of the demand for the Snapdragon S4, which remains the only current realistic option for manufacturers looking for a processor with power to match its quad-core counterparts while featuring LTE support.
[via The Verge]