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While Qualcomm continues to play Pong with Broadcom about a possible acquisition, the company is continuing to push forward as if nothing is going to happen. This was evidenced by a new partnership with Samsung in regards to its 7nm process for future processors, as well as a move to 5G capabilities
The announcement was made official by Samsung in a press release which confirmed that Qualcomm’s upcoming Snapdragon 5G chipsets will be based on Samsung’s 7-nanometer process. The reason for this partnership is to help Qualcomm achieve a smaller footprint for its future processors while bringing Samsung’s chipsets into more devices.
“Using 7nm LPP EUV, our new generation of Snapdragon 5G mobile chipsets will take advantage of the process improvements and advanced chip design to improve the user experience of future devices.”
– RK Chunduru, Qualcomm
Currently, Samsung’s processor division mainly focuses on its own devices with the Exynos lineup. Things are about to change in a big way after seeing the Meizu M6S which features the Exynos 7672 chipset. This marks the first non-Samsung device to be powered by an Exynos chipset.
Of course, Samsung will likely continue holding its flagship chipsets for its own global flagship units. However, the partnership with Qualcomm makes much more sense when you consider that Qualcomm dominates flagship devices launched here in the US.
Samsung’s upcoming foundry plant
If you were hoping to see one of these new processors released in 2018, you will be sorely disappointed. Samsung has just now “broken ground” on a new foundry plant which will be the home of the company’s 7-nanometer processors. This means 2019 will likely be the ‘Year of 5G’ and many devices will be featuring chipsets which are capable of handling Gigabit network capacity.
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