TSMC to produce Qualcomm’s 5G SoC called Snapdragon 855

As of now, only Apple and Huawei have used chips based on 7nm process. However, it appears that the rest of the Android community will soon join the pair. Today, Roland Quandt, cleared the air on some basic issues surrounding the upcoming 5G chip from Qualcomm. From the news making the rounds, this SoC has been called Snapdragon 8150 but Mr. Quandt said in a tweet today the SD8150 is only an internal name. This chip will be publicly called Snapdragon 855, a direct successor to this year’s flagship, Snapdragon 845.

In addition, his tweet also revealed that the SD855 will be built by TSMC and it will pride as the first Qualcomm chip to be built with the 7nm process. Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 adopts a three-cluster architecture. The CPU clock speed is 1.78GHz, 2.42GHz, and 2.84GHz, respectively, and the graphics processing unit is Adreno 640.

In addition, gaming and augmented reality applications will benefit from this chip which uses a dedicated computational vision engine to process data. Furthermore, the Snapdragon 855 integrates an NPU (Neural Network Unit). This is the first Qualcomm chip with an NPU and its AI performance has been greatly improved. This SoC uses the Snapdragon X24 LTE modem and the Snapdragon X50 modem can be used to support 5G network.

From the first quarter of next year, we will see some smartphones with this chip. The likes of Samsung, LG, HTC, Motorola, Google, and Sony are all positioned to release a flagship smartphone with the SD855. Other manufacturers will probably follow later in the year.