Samsung Confirms It’s Making The Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 Chip

Samsung will make components for just about every premium Android and Windows smartphone this year after it confirmed it would manufacture Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820 chipset alongside and using the same process as its own Exynos processors.

This will generate millions in royalties for the South Korean giant’s chip business and help  ameliorate its somewhat flagging financial fortunes.

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Samsung’s new production method will use its 14nm LPP (Low-Power Plus) process – the second generation of the company’s 14nm FinFET process technology.

It is claimed technology will make any chip, including the Snapdragon 820 and the flagship Exynos Octa 8, 15 percent faster and 15 percent more fuel efficient compared to the previous generation thanks to improvements in “transistor structure and process optimisation”.

The new transistors could also be used for smart devices connecting to the Internet of Things, providing a major boost in power as well as its reduced size.

“We are pleased to start production of our industry-leading, 2nd generation 14nm FinFET process technology that delivers the highest level of performance and power efficiency” said Charlie Bae, executive vice president of sales & marketing for Samsung’s system LSI business.

“Samsung will continue to offer derivative processes of its advanced 14nm FinFET technology to maintain our technology leadership.”

Officially revealed back in November, and set to appear in phones soon, the Snapdragon 820 is Qualcomm’s most powerful chipset to date, featuring entirely new and custom-made components, including the modem, CPU and GPU.

This includes an all-new quad-core 64-bit Kryo CPU, marking the company’s first 14nm build and providing hugely improved speeds of up to 2.2Ghz, with lower power consumption than ever.

Also included is a new X12 LTE modem means that any device powered by the chip will be able to support LTE Cat 12 networks, allowing download speeds of up to 600Mbps.

“Qualcomm has always used a variety of fab suppliers and will continue to do so,” a Qualcomm spokesperson told TechWeekEurope. “Our decision to choose a specific process technology is based on its ability to meet our design goals for performance, power efficiency and yield. We are confident the Snapdragon 820 will set the bar for the premium tier smartphone in 2016.”

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