Qualcomm has now revealed the next Snapdragon Tech Summit is coming soon. The highlight of the event will likely be the flagship Snapdragon 865 chipset.
The 2019 Snapdragon Tech Summit takes place in Hawaii between December 3 and 5.
The Snapdragon 865 is the next high-end SoC expected to power most Android smartphones next year.
Snapdragon 865 coming with the help of Samsung
Details remain sparse, but apparently, the silicon will be made using Samsung’s 7nm EUV process. The South Korean giant reportedly has an edge over TSMC’s 7nm FinFET process when it comes to power consumption.
Basically, EUV or the extreme ultraviolet lithography process allows more precise transistor placement. This precision allows a foundry to fit in more transistors inside the chipset. And the higher the number of transistors, the better the performance. This perhaps explains why Qualcomm has decided to choose Samsung this year.
The chipmaker will apparently go back to TSMC in 2021 to benefit from its 5nm process.
The Snapdragon 865 will likely retain the same CPU configuration as the Snapdragon 855 and Snapdragon 855 Plus. This means it will be an octa-core chipset with a base frequency of 1.8GHz. However, the CPU cores will supposedly be based on ARM’s Cortex-A75 architecture. The chip might also get a new Adreno GPU. AI is also likely to receive a boost from a new Neural Processing Unit.
The chipset is also rumored to support the new LPDDR5 standard for RAM and UFS 3.0 storage. Combined, these changes will result in performance gains over the Snapdragon 855.
But then, that’s almost a given. What will be more interesting to see is how the SoC stacks up against competing chipsets. The Snapdragon 865 has already been spotted getting benchmarked.
Snapdragon 865 reportedly available in two variants
If rumors are anything to go by, Qualcomm will reveal two variants of the Snapdragon 865. One is apparently internally codenamed ‘Kona’’ while the other is called ‘Huracan’. One variant will come with an embedded 5G modem and the other will natively support LTE only. Logic dictates that the later will go inside phones bound for markets where 5G isn’t expected to become mainstream anytime soon.
It also remains to be seen if the modem will be the X55 or some variation of it.
The Snapdragon 865 will reportedly enter mass production in February. However, that didn’t stop the Chinese company 8848 from announcing a phone that’s fueled by the yet to be releases chipset. Next up, we will likely see Samsung announce the Galaxy S11 series with the chipset inside.
As is usually the case, some of the Galaxy S11 variants will likely be fueled by Samsung’s own Exynos 9830 SoC.
Qualcomm might also announce 600 and 700 series chipsets with an integrated 5G modem ar the summit. This will make 5G handsets more accessible to everyone.