According to industry sources, MediaTek will remain TSMC’s partner. For those of you who don’t know, MediaTek and TSMC have been partners for quite some time now, and TSMC actually manufactured MediaTek’s 10nm Helio X30 SoC. Well, yield rates for TSMC’s 10nm process were not exactly great, they were unsatisfactory, but it seems like MediaTek intends to stick with TSMC moving forward, as the company will manufacture MediaTek’s 7nm chips in the future, at least if industry sources are to be believed.
According to a report, TSMC will enter risk production for a new MediaTek chip based on a 7nm process in the second quarter of this year, and that chip will actually sport 12 cores, which is interesting. TSMC said that the node technology will be ready for risk production in late Q1, so as soon as that is done, testing will begin it seems. Reports have been saying that low yield rates will affect Helio X30 shipments, but the company was quick to deny such reports, saying that the Helio X30 will ship according to the schedule, without delays. Speaking of which, MediaTek officially announced the Helio X30 last year, but we didn’t get all the necessary info back then. Well, MediaTek release all the necessary info during this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona which wrapped up recently, and the Helio X30 truly seems like a very powerful chipset, and if previous years are any indication, this chip will be one of the most utilized processors in the world in 2017.
Now, you can expect first Helio X30-powered smartphone to start landing in the second quarter of this year, as MediaTek said that mass production already began, and that the chip will be commercially available in Q2 2017. The Helio X30 actually joined the likes of Snapdragon 835 and Exynos 8895, as all three of those chips are made using a 10nm process, though they’re quite different, and have been manufactured by a different 10nm process, Snapdragon 835 and Exynos 8895 are using the 10nm FinFET process. The Helio X30 will be inferior to both the Snapdragon 835 and Exynos 8895, but it will also be quite a bit more affordable, and still quite powerful.