Yesterday, Qualcomm announced its first 7nm chips and it appears that we have not heard the last of the story. Current reports suggest that the company may be preparing to develop the Snapdragon 855 on a 7nm process as well. The expected SD845 is built using a 10nm Low Power Plus process which Samsung claims is an incremental upgrade over the 10nm Low Power Early process used in the SD835. In terms of performance, Qualcomm says that SD845 performance is 10% higher and it reduces power consumption by 15% relative to SD835.
Qualcomm won't say it, but their contractors do. Snapdragon 855 (SDM855) is the first 7nm SoC. (probably the one the X24 modem ends up in) pic.twitter.com/Ot1J34fQoG
Gizchina News of the week
— Roland Quandt (@rquandt) February 15, 2018
Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 is a 2019 chipset and rumors have it that TSMC is to build the chip. It is possible that the same fab who built the X24 modem will handle the SD855, unfortunately, Qualcomm didn’t mention who is building the X24 modem. If TSMC handles this project, then we should be expecting a chip with 40% power reduction or 37% or more increase in performance over their 10nm process.
