Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 could arrive in two versions: TSMC 4 nm and 3 nm
The news comes from Korean site gamma0burst, which shared an email conversation between Qualcomm and its smartphone partners such as Samsung. In the leaked documents, Qualcomm writes that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 will use the latest Cortex X4, Cortex A720 and Cortex A520 cores for its CPU part of the chipset.
What is also interesting is that Qualcomm wrote that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 will arrive in two variants. One will be made in the well-known TSMC 3 nm N4P manufacturing process, while the other will use the more modern 3 nm N3E process.
This strategy makes sense because companies like Apple, Nvidia and AMD have already occupied a good part of TSMC’s 3 nm production facilities, so Qualcomm could alleviate the current situation a little in this way.
Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 deja vi
If you remember, Qualcomm introduced two flagship chipsets in 2022 – Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 and Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1. The key difference between these two chipsets is that the first one is made in the Samsung 4 nm production process, and the second one (Plus) in TSMC 4 nm production. Qualcomm was not satisfied with the energy efficiency of the Samsung chip, so it decided to change the manufacturer, which resulted in 30% lower consumption and significantly lower operating temperatures.
It is still unknown if the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 will have different names for different versions of the chip, i.e. if the 3nm one will be the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 3. Also, it will be interesting to compare the two chips and see if there are any differences in performance and consumption, as it was with Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 and Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1.
The premiere of the new flagship Snapdragon chipset is expected at the regular summit in Hawaii, which is scheduled for October 24 this year.