Nobody can deny the strong bond between these two brands, Qualcomm and TSMC, in the tech industry. This strong bond started when Qualcomm cast off Samsung Foundry for TSMC just after the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 blunder, and till now the brand has not looked back.
After the blunder of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, its next-generation chipset sequentially—the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1, Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, and Snapdragon 8 Gen 3—are all made by TSMC. But now it appears that the brand might come to the same table as Samsung Foundry.
Recent reports suggest that Samsung Foundry may manufacture Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chips for the Samsung Galaxy S26 series. Going back to the past two years, Qualcomm has been used to launch two variants of its flagship chipset: the regular and the Galaxy. The difference appeared in the For Galaxy versions of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chips, which have higher CPU and GPU clock speeds, and they powered the Samsung Galaxy smartphones as well as tablets.
However, a couple of days ago, it was reported that Qualcomm had tasked both Samsung Foundry and TSMC with making 2nm prototype chipsets. The reports are saying that for the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4, Qualcomm will use the second-generation 3nm process (N3E) of TSMC. This process will help improve power efficiency and yield as compared to the first-generation 3nm process (N3/N3B), which is used to fabricate the Apple A17 Pro chip used in the iPhone 15 Pro series.
Qualcomm has also looked at the 3nm (3GAP) process of Samsung Foundry but, after some time, decided to go exclusively with TSMC for the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4. And now for the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5, it could be used by both Samsung Foundry and TSMC for the fabrication of chips.
