Reports from South Korea indicate that Samsung Electronics has received orders from Qualcomm for its next-gen application processor (AP) which is expected to go by the name Snapdragon 865. This is coming after a one-year hiatus between both companies. Taiwanese Semiconductor manufacturing company (TSMC) clinched the orders in 2018 for the current-gen Snapdragon 855 chipset.

South Korea media outfit Theelec reports that Samsung foundry for the SD865 is expected to commence at the end of 2019. The chipset will be manufactured on the 7nm ultra-violet (EUV) process with high throughput. This will be the first chipset Samsung will be manufacturing for Qualcomm using Samsung’s 7-nm EUV process. The last chip – Snapdragon 845 manufactured by Samsung foundry uses a 10nm wafer. TSMC took the lead in the 7nm process in 2018 and so, it got the orders from Qualcomm. But according to Qualcomm, the Samsung 7-nm EUV is more competitive than the TSMC 7-nm process, thus necessitating the shift to Samsung. Earlier in April, Samsung reportedly began shipping the 7-nm EUV process Exynos AP, which is expected to be used in Samsung’s upcoming flagship – the Galaxy Note 10.

Although negotiations are said to still be ongoing, both firms have reportedly entered the final stage of process negotiation. Qualcomm is expected to launch the Snapdragon 865 in 2020. Apart from Qualcomm, other OEMs expected to use Samsung’s 7nm EUV include NVIDIA, IBM and several others apart from Apple and Huawei. The next-gen chipset is also expected to come in two versions, a standard version and another equipped with Snapdragon X55 5G chipset.