It seems that Qualcomm plans to dual source the 2nd generation of Snapdragon 8 Elite – Korean publication Sedaily reports that Qualcomm and Samsung have reached a deal to fab the chip on the advanced 2nm node, but also that TSMC will produce a version of the chip on a 3nm node.
Samsung will be making the chips at its Hwaseong S3 factory, producing a thousand 12-inch wafers a month. These chips will be used in Galaxy devices in the second half of next year – if that is true, they will be too late for the Galaxy S26 series, so maybe the Galaxy Z Fold8 and Z Flip8 (possibly the Tab S11 slates too).
Timeline for Samsung’s Gate-All-Around (GAA) nodes
The two companies have reached a similar deal for another chip, reports the publication. Qualcomm has designed a 4nm chipset for eXtended Reality (XR) headsets that will be used in Samsung’s Project Moohan, which is scheduled to release later this year. Samsung is working on two other XR headsets, Project Haean and Project Jinju, but it’s not clear what chips will be used for those.
Samsung has the capacity to produce 7,000 12-inch wafers on its 2nm node, so the Snapdragon 8 Elite 2nd gen deal accounts for only 15% of its capacity. However, insiders say that this deal is a show of confidence in Samsung’s foundries, which will help it attract other customers.
Of course, part of the 2nm capacity will be allocated to the Exynos 2600 chipset, which will “definitely” be used in the Galaxy S26 series (according to leaksters, anyway). But will all S26 models use Exynos? That part is a little unclear and depends on when TSMC-made Elite 2 chips will be available (since the Samsung-made ones will only come later in the year). We will know more when Qualcomm unveils the Elite 2 in October.
The evolution of transistor design
As for TSMC’s own 2nm efforts, Apple reportedly delayed its move to 2nm to 2026 due to low yields. This likely played a part in the Qualcomm/Samsung deal as Apple tends to buy up most if not all the available capacity on cutting edge TSMC nodes.
Source (in Korean)
