Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 will rely on TSMC once again
Reportedly, Qualcomm will once again rely solely on TSMC to produce the 3nm-based Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 chipset. For those who don’t know, it was previously said that the new SD Gen 4 would be produced by both Samsung and TSMC. It seems that the chip giant is not yet convinced about the efficiency or performance of Samsung Foundry.
Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 for Galaxy, which will be exclusive to the Galaxy S25 series, can be produced in Samsung’s 3GAP foundry. If this is confirmed, we may encounter performance differences.
Coming back to Snapdragon 8 Gen 4, the new chipset is expected to exceed 10,000 points in Geekbench 6. On the other hand, the Adreno 830 GPU will only have 8W power consumption. For the sake of comparison, let us point out that the Apple A17 Pro peaks at 10.9 W, while the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 is at close levels. This indicates a significant increase in productivity. Of course, there is a 3nm fabrication process behind this.
Considering the difference between Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 and Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1, Qualcomm’s decision is certainly not surprising. To recall, Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 was produced by Samsung and faced both thermal throttling and efficiency issues. In the Plus version, where these problems were solved, TSMC was switched.
In any case, the release of Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 is still about a year away. Therefore, we think more details will be shared as the actual announcement gets closer.