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A report from China claims that Qualcomm has finalised the specs of its upcoming chipset — the Snapdragon 820 — and has started sampling it to OEMs.
The Snapdragon 820 will be Qualcomm’s first chip to be based on its own custom ‘Kryo’ cores, and will reportedly be clocked at 3GHz. The chipset will be built on Samsung’s foundries, which are currently capable of fabricating chipsets at 14nm FinFET process.
As per the report, Qualcomm has already provided sample chipsets to Sony, HTC and Xiaomi for testing purposes. It also claims that Xiaomi’s Mi 5 will be among the first Android smartphone to make use of the Snapdragon 820 chipset.
Qualcomm has generally relied on TSMC to fabricate its chipsets, and this is the first time that it will be making use of Samsung’s foundries for its chipsets. Previous reports have also claimed the same thing, so it should not really be a surprise now if Qualcomm does end up using Samsung’s foundries for its Snapdragon 820 chipset.
Samsung foundries are able to fabricate chipsets at 14m FinFET process, while TSMC is just going to start fabricating chipsets on the 16nm process. This gives Samsung an edge that every chipmaker would like to have, since a lower fabrication process leads to lower power consumer and heating issues, which have greatly crippled Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810 chipset performance.
[Via Mobile-dad]
