According to South Korean media reports yesterday, a source revealed that Nvidia, the leader of GPU, will release the RTX 40 series with a 5-nanometer process in September this year, confirming that it will cooperate with TSMC. Previously, the Nvidia RTX 30 series was mainly produced by Samsung 8nm process technology.

In addition, according to TheElec, sources said Qualcomm gave part of the contract manufacturing order for its 4nm AP processor Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 to TSMC, while Qualcomm had previously given the contract manufacturing order to Samsung Electronics only.

According to the source, Qualcomm decided to rely more on TSMC than Samsung Electronics because the latter's advanced process nodes faced production problems. Samsung Electronics's contract semiconductor division, Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, has a yield of about 35 per cent, while its self-developed Exynos 2200 has an even lower yield.

Qualcomm's decision was a major blow to Samsung after TSMC competed for orders for Nvidia 7nm GPU last year.

The industry believes that Samsung lost Nvidia GPU and Qualcomm AP, and the wafer foundry status has been shaken. In addition, as far as the process is concerned, for example, Samsung's 4nm process is far from TSMC's 4nm process, especially in terms of the power consumption performance of mobile phone chips, and the gap between Samsung and TSMC seems to be accelerating.