Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X20 LTE modem will be featured in the Snapdragon 845, the company’s upcoming system-on-chip (SoC) that’s set to be commercialized in 2018, according to a LinkedIn profile of one of its employees that was uncovered on Saturday. One Senior Staff Engineer at Qualcomm disclosed that they are currently working on commercializing the “SDM845 Modem” and the Snapdragon X20, heavily implying that the firm’s gigabit LTE modem will be present in its upcoming high-end piece of silicon, as evidenced by the screenshot of the said LinkedIn profile that can be seen beneath this writing.
Originally announced in late February, the Snapdragon X20 is a contemporary modem with LTE Category 18 support that boasts download speeds of up to 1.2Gbps. Numerous original equipment manufacturers (OEM) have already received samples of the chip earlier this year, Qualcomm previously said, indicating that the Snapdragon X20 will be commercialized in the near future. Just like the company’s recently announced flagship chips, its latest premium modem is built on the 10nm FinFET process. In addition to supporting gigabit download speeds, it can also achieve peak upload speeds of 150Mbps by relying on 2x20MHz carrier aggregation. The San Diego, California-based semiconductor manufacturer asserted that the Snapdragon X20 has been specifically designed for usage in the context of the fifth generation (5G) of mobile networks, with the company hoping that the modem will help facilitate the adoption of the latest telecommunications technologies. While Qualcomm already revealed one gigabit LTE modem — the Snapdragon X50 — its new chip is the first one of its kind that’s available commercially and the first modem in general capable of simultaneously receiving LTE data from up to 12 streams.
According to previous reports, the Snapdragon 845 has been in active development for several months now and is expected to power a number of high-end Android devices that are said to be released next year. The Galaxy S9 series and LG G7 have recently been specifically associated with Qualcomm’s upcoming premium silicon and the company’s chipset will likely also be adopted by a number of other OEMs including Huawei, HTC, and Sony. More details on the Snapdragon 845 and industry’s efforts to commercialize it should follow later this year.