Recently, Qualcomm officially announced its next-generation flagship mobile chipset — Snapdragon 888. The processor is the successor to the company’s own Snapdragon 865 SoC launched last year.

The company was expected to name this chipset Qualcomm Snapdragon 875 but instead, when launched, the company named it Snapdragon 888. The reason for such a move from the company is also interesting.

During the keynote, Qualcomm claimed the number 888 to be the most premium name possible. That is because, in the Chinese culture, the number 888 symbolizes luck and prosperity, which the company wants to ensure for its continued success.

For Qualcomm, out of its 14 partners, 12 are the Chinese smartphone manufacturers. With the ongoing US-China trade war, the company wanted to ensure that it doesn’t affect the adaptability of its flagship chipset, and thus, opted for Snapdragon 888.

Xiaomi has confirmed that the brand’s Mi 11 will be the first smartphone to feature the newly launched SD888 SoC. While the launch date is not yet known, reports indicate that the phone could go official later this month.

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Several other companies have also confirmed their flagship smartphone powered by the Snapdragon 888 chipset, which includes Black Shark, Nubia Red Magic, OPPO, Realme, LG, Vivo, iQOO, and OnePlus.

As for the chipset, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 is the most powerful offering from the company so far. It packs one Cortex X1 core, three Cortex A78 cores, and four Cortex A55 cores, along with Adreno 660 GPU.

It has an integrated Snapdragon X60 5G modem with support for mmWave and sub-6GHz 5G with support for most of the bands worldwide. The new SoC also supports Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 and connectivity features. Here are the detailed specs of the chipset.

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Researchers have found that Snapdragon series smartphone chipsets from Qualcomm, which is widely being used in Android devices, has over 400 instances of vulnerable code that puts millions of users at risk.

Check Point, a cybersecurity firm has found that the DSP (Digital Signal Processor) used in Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset has the vulnerable code which it is calling “Achilles” and is claimed to impact phones to be used as a spying tool.

An app can bypass the usual security measures and can then access phone’s photos, videos, GPS, and location data, that too without the owner knowing about it. The attacker can also lock the phone with all the data stored, rendering it useless. It can also be used to store unknown and unremovable malware on the device.

The research firm has said that it has notified Qualcomm about its findings, as well as government officials and affected vendors. Given that millions of Android devices are at risk, the company has not published the details about its findings.

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It is also being reported that Qualcomm has now fixed the issue but the affected devices can only be secured once the phone manufacturers start pushing the relevant updates and security patches to the affected phones, which is likely to take time.

In a statement, Qualcomm said that it has worked hard to validate and fix the issues. It also added that the company has not found any evidence of the Achilles vulnerability being exploited in the wild.

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Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 chipset is currently the flagship offering from the company which is powering most of the premium smartphones launched this year so far and will continue to do so until its successor arrives.

The successor to the SD865 SoC is expected to get launched as Qualcomm Snapdragon 875 by the end of this year, most probably in December. As per the reports, the chipset could be the company’s first to be manufactured using 5nm process.

Now, a new report claims that the upcoming Snapdragon 875 chipset, codenamed SM8350, will come packed with the new Snapdragon X60 5G modem RF-integrated system. It remains to be seen if the modem will be integrated or optional. Given that the 5G adaptation is on the rise, it won’t be surprising if Qualcomm decides to go with the integrated modem route.

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 also comes with an embedded 5G modem but people are not happy with this given that it has increased the cost of the chipset. This has led to smartphones being more expensive even for the 4G-only models as 5G infrastructure is still at the early stage of development.

The report adds that the upcoming SD875 will have Kryo 685 CPU built on ARM v8 Cortex technology with Adreno 660 GPU, Adreno 65 VPU, and Adreno 1095 DPU. The modem will support mmWave and sub-6GHz bands.

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It is also said to have Qualcomm Secure Processing Unit (SPU250), Spectra 580 image-processing engine, and Snapdragon Sensors Core Technology. As for the connectivity options, it’ll have external Wi-Fi 802.11ax, 2×2 MIMO, and Bluetooth Milan.

The chipset will come with Compute Hexagon DSP with Hexagon Vector eXtensions and Hexagon Tensor Accelerator. It will support Quad-channel package-on-package (PoP) high-speed LPDDR5 SDRAM. It is also said to come with low-power audio subsystem combined with Aqstic Audio Technologies WCD9380 and WCD9385 audio codec.

Meanwhile, we are waiting for some kind of confirmation about the Snapdragon 865+ chipset. Some some reports says that the upgraded SoC is coming and the specs have also leaked, Meizu CMO recently said that SD865+ isn’t coming this year.

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(Source)

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At a time when most of the smartphone chipsets are made using 7nm node, Unisoc recently launched the world’s first 6nm chipset which was manufactured by TSMC using extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL). However, other companies are not much behind.

Samsung, the world’s second largest chipset maker after TSMC, has already started mass production of 6nm and 7nm EUV (Extreme Ultraviolet) chipsets. Now, the company has announced that it plans to start mass production of 5nm chipsets.

The company has also added that it will continue to invest in advanced processes as well as GAA 3nm process. The Samsung V1 facility located in Hwaseong, South Korea, is the one where the production will take place. It is a specialised facility with state-of-the-art technology and is capable of production of chipsets as small as 3nm.

There are reports claiming that Google has partnered with Samsung for a custom Exynos chipset which is scheduled to release this year. The 5nm chipset is expected to feature an octa-core CPU consisting of two Cortex-A78 cores, two Cortex-A76 cores, and four Cortex-A55 cores. The graphics will be taken care of by an unannounced Mali MP20 GPU based on Borr microarchitecture. It is also said to include Google’s own Visual Core ISP and NPU instead of Samsung’s.

A couple of months ago, it was reported that Samsung Electronics’ semiconductor manufacturing division won a contract to make new Qualcomm 5G chips using . This is a major boost for the company to aims to rival TSMC.

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To get a lead among its competitors, Samsung was set to start mass production of 3nm chipset from 2021 but it seems that the company is now forced to delay the manufacturing launch of this new process till 2022, mainly because of the COVID-19 outbreak.

It is reported that the coronavirus has hampered Samsung’s ability to fulfil the scheduled installation of equipment for the new production lines. The 3nm process from Samsung is based on the Gate All Around (GAAFET) technology rather than FinFET. It supposedly reduces the total silicon size by 35 percent while using about 50 percent less power.

It also allows for the same amount of power consumption and 33 percent performance increase over the 5nm FinFET process. The GAAFET design differs from the FinFET design as it is built around having gates around four sides of the channel, which ensures reduced power leakage and improved control over the channel.

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As expected, China-based tech giant Huawei has today announced its latest upper mid-range mobile chipset — Kirin 810. With this, Huawei has now become the world’s first smartphone company to have two chipsets based on a 7nm process in its portfolio.

The HiSilicon Kirin 810 is an octa-core processor which comes equipped with two Cortex-A76 high-performance large cores clocked at 2.27 GHz and six Cortex-A55 energy efficient small cores clocked at 1.88 GHz. It is coupled with Mali-G52 GPU for graphics processing.

The newly announced chipset comes with the new Huawei DaVinci architecture NPU, which consumes less energy and has artificial intelligence (AI) technology running at over 32,280 points, surpassing the scores of Snapdragon 855 SoC and Snapdragon 730 SoC.

The chipset is manufactured using TSMC’s 7nm mode, the same process that was used to manufacture flagship chipsets such as Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 and Apple A12 Bionic, among others.

The company says that the image processing capability of this new smartphone processor is at par with those of the flagship grade SoCs. Huawei has included a powerful night vision algorithm for higher brightness and greater tolerance.

It comes with NPU and Huawei HiAi 2.0 which aims at improving the performance of the artificial intelligence technology and the company has added support for a Game+ mode aiming to enhance the gaming experience.

The Huawei’s HiSilicon Kirin 810 octa-core processor is the first chipset under the company’s all-new Kirin 800-series. As evident from the name, it is an upper mid-range processor, placed between the mid-range Kirin 700-series and the top-end Kirin 900-series.

Huawei Nova 5 is the first smartphone to come powered by this new Kirin 810 octa-core 7nm chipset. Apart from that, the upcoming Huawei 9X Pro is also said to be powered by the same processor.

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Huawei’s chipmaking arm HiSilicon is reportedly planning to go aggressive for the development of 5G mobile chipsets with an integrated modem. It is also planning to make 5G mmWave solutions for smartphones after releasing a new chipset later this year.

As per the reports, Huawei will be releasing its next chipset called the Kirin 985 in the second half of this year. The chipset will support Huawei’s high-end 4G smartphones, and can also come with add-on Balong 5G modem chips to support 5G sub 6GHz smartphones.

The same chipset could be used to power the company’s next flagship smartphone — the Huawei Mate 30 series, which is expected to launch in the fourth quarter of this year. The Kirin 985 chipset will be manufactured by TSMC on its 7nm+ node and packaged by ASE Technology Holding and its affiliated Siliconware Precision with FC-PoP technology.

Reports indicate that the company’s new mobile SoC will undergo trial production in the second quarter and based on that, it will go into mass production in the third quarter. Following the footsteps of Qualcomm, the leading company in the mobile chipsets market, Huawei is also going aggressive for the 5G.

It is planning to roll out 5G SoCs integrated with modem chips between late 2019 and early 2020, which are expected to become the mainstream AP solutions for smartphones in the 5G era. The company also plans to tap into the segment of mmWave 5G smartphone AP in early 2020.

To support the transition from 4G to 5G, chipmakers are also rolling out multiple mobile AP versions that can be installed with add-on 4G and 5G modem chips, before launching the chipsets integrating 5G modem chips and mmWave 5G SoCs in 2020.

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With such rapid pace development, Qualcomm and Huawei are eyeing to be among the top two suppliers of 5G SoC. On the other hand, Taiwan-based MediaTek is set to release a sub 6GHz 5G chip by the end of this year while Apple is not expected to join the 5G market until 2020.

(Via)

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MediaTek, the Taiwan-based chipset manufacturer, has today officially released a statement saying that the rumors related to the company terminating its partnership with Xiaomi are not true.

The development comes after reports emerging online which suggested that MediaTek has terminated its partnership with Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi and will no longer provide its mobile chipsets. Debunking that, MediaTek said that their relationship is good and the partnership is going on smoothly as usual and there’s no suspension of supply.

Currently, there are two Xiaomi smartphones that are powered by MediaTek’s chipsets — Xiaomi Redmi 6 and Xiaomi Redmi 6A. While the Redmi 6 is powered by Helio P22 chipset manufactured using a 12nm process, the Redmi 6A is powered by Helio A22 processor.

MediaTek’s chipsets are mostly used to power low-end and mid-range smartphones and the company has not yet launched a high-end chipset that could power flagship smartphones. In December 2018, the company reported consolidated revenue of 21.387 billion Taiwan dollars, representing an increase of 14.66 percent.

The company’s consolidated revenue in the four quarter of 2018 was 60.891 billion Taiwan dollars, which represents a decline of 9.2 percent. According to data released by China Science and Technology Institute, China’s smartphone shipments fell by 15.5 percent, and annual shipments fell to 390 million units.

Read More: MediaTek Helio P35 scores 86,352 in a benchmark test, indicates better performance than Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 SoC

Like many other technology companies, MediaTek is also involved in patent litigation. AMD has reportedly filed a lawsuit against MediaTek among others and alleged two patent infringements related to GPU/APU technology and is looking for cash compensation.

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As expected, during the Snapdragon Tech Summit 2018, US-based chipset manufacturer has announced its latest flagship mobile chipset — Qualcomm Snapdragon 855. The Snapdragon 855, which is the successor of the current-generation Snapdragon 845, comes with support for 5G connectivity and a few other features, aimed at improving the user experience.

The smartphone industry is moving towards the 5G-era and Qualcomm being the dominant mobile chipset manufacturer, is leaving no stones unturned when it comes to 5G connectivity. The newly announced Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 is the world’s first commercial 5G mobile platform.

The chipset is offering 5G connectivity using the company’s own Snapdragon X50 5G modem. The 5G modem is combined with Qualcomm QTM052 mmWave antenna modules with integrated RF trans-receiver, RF front-end antenna, and antenna elements.

The octa-core processor features four power-saving cores clocked at 1.78GHz, three performance cores clocked at 2.42GHz and another special “gold” core for performance boost which is clocked at 2.84GHz. It is coupled with Adreno 640 graphics processor, which is expected to bring performance improvement.

Just like the Apple A12 Bionic chipset and Huawei’s Kirin 980 processor, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 is also manufactured using the 7nm process by TSMC. The Snapdragon 855 also comes with the company’s fourth-generation, multi-core AI Engine that is claimed to offer up to 3 times the AI performance compared to the Snapdragon 845.

The newly unveiled chipset also features the world’s first Computer Vision Image Signal Processor (CV-ISP) to deliver new photo and video capture features. For the gaming, the company unveiled Snapdragon Elite Gaming, a set of features in the mobile platform to enhance mobile gaming experiences.

The company has also announced the Qualcomm 3D Sonic Sensor—an under-display fingerprint sensor solution that uses ultrasonic waves, unlike optical under-display fingerprint sensors which use light. According to the company, 3D Sonic Sensor is more secure and accurate than the alternative.

Most of the high-end smartphone coming in 2019 will be powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 octa-core chipset. We’ll be seeing devices from manufacturers such as Samsung, Xiaomi, LG, HTC, Motorola, Google, Sony, OnePlus, Oppo, and Vivo from early next year.

Read More: Qualcomm reveals Xiaomi, HMD, OnePlus, OPPO, Vivo are among its ‘committed’ 5G partners for 2019

Qualcomm will reveal more details about the Snapdragon 855 mobile platform as the Snapdragon Tech Summit 2018 continues in Hawaii, USA. Stay tuned for more updates throughout the Summit.

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Today, Samsung has officially unveiled its next-generation mobile chipset — Samsung Exynos 9820 in China carrying a tagline that reads “Extraordinary wisdom, born from the inside.”

The new chipset from Samsung is manufactured using 8nm LPP FinFET process, which the company says consumes 10 percent less power compared to the 10nm process. For comparison, Huawei‘s Kirin 980 and Apple‘s A12 Bionic chipsets are manufactured using the 7nm process.

Samsung Exynos 9820 has a tri-cluster architecture with the fourth generation custom designed CPU cores. It consists of two custom cores for processing power, two Cortex A75 large cores for optimal performance, and four Cortex A55 small cores for greater efficiency.

As per the company, compared to the Exynos 9810, the multi-core performance increased by 15 percent and single-core performance increased by 20 percent. The overall performance of this new chipset is 40 percent better than its predecessor, claims Samsung.

The chipset comes with the Mali-G76 MP12 graphics processor, which has more execution units and double channels. It is claimed to offer 40 percent better performance than the GPU in Exynos 9810 and is also said to be 35 percent more energy efficient. For comparison, the Kirin 980 chipset features Mali-G76 MP10 GPU.

For the first time, the Exynos 9-series chipset from Samsung comes with Neural Processing Unit (NPU) which is said to offer seven times artificial intelligence-based computing power compared to its predecessor.

Coming to the photography, the Exynos 9820 chipset has advanced ISP that supports up to five sensing elements, including infrared sensors for enabling facial recognition. For the front-facing camera, it supports camera sensor of up to 22MP and the same 22MP for the rear camera. It also supports dual-camera setup with a maximum of a 16MP camera sensor. For video recording, the chipset supports 8K 30fps and 4K 120fps and also supports 10bit HEVC/H.264/VP9 codec.

For the display, the chipset supports 4K resolution. As for connectivity, the new chipset from Samsung supports 4G LTE baseband with highest downlink Cat.20 8CA that supports peak speed of 2Gbps and uplink speed of up to 316Mbps. It also supports UFS 2.1/3.0 flash memory and there’s also a hardware-level PUF key management.

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The Samsung Exynos 9820 flagship chipset from the South Korean giant will be mass produced by the end of this year and is expected to be used in the company’s upcoming smartphone — Galaxy S10 — which could be unveiled in February next year during Mobile World Congress.

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Earlier this year, in February, MediaTek announced its Helio P60 mobile chipset which have been received well in the market. Now, new reports suggest that the Taiwan-based mobile chipset manufacturer is now gearing up to soon launch the MediaTek Helio P70 chipset, probably later this month, to maintain its mobile chipset momentum.

The upcoming MediaTek Helio P70 chipset will be manufactured using the 12nm design process. It will come with an octa-core processor, having four A73 cores and four A53 cores, coupled with Mali-G72 GPU — similar to the Helio P60 launched in February this year.

However, the difference between the P60 and the upcoming P70 chipset is that the Helio P70 will come with a discrete Neural Processing Unite (NPU) instead of the Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) found in Helio P60.

Previous report had indicated that the Helio P70 will support up to 8GB of RAM, eMMC 5.1 or UFS 2.1 storage, 3 ISPs with support for up to 32-megapixel and Cat. 12 LTE modem. It will support AI technology as well as facial recognition, along with AR/VR and 3D sensor functions.

While the Helio P60 was MediaTek’s answer to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 SoC, the Helio P70 will be up against Snapdragon 710 Soc. Earlier this year, the unannounced Helio P70 SoC appeared on AnTuTu, recording a score of 156,906.

• Read More: Mediatek to release a cheaper and secure version of 3D Face Recognition in partnership with Himax And Megvi

This year, along with the launch of Helio P70 later, the company is also set to kick off mass production of its 7nm Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASIC), which is built using silicon-proven 56G PAM4 SerDes IP based on a 7nm FinFET process.

(Source)

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Huawei, which is among the leading smartphone manufacturers in the world, is reportedly working on a new chipset named Kirin 1020, which is expected to twice as powerful as the company’s current flagship chipset Kirin 970.

The Chinese smartphone manufacturer has been using its own in-house developed mobile chips on a majority of its smartphones, as well as for smartphones under its sub-brand Honor. There are many benefits to this practice, including low costs, differentiating factor compared to others, and less dependency on third-parties, among others.

If the latest reports are to be believed, then the China-based company is working on a new flagship chipset by the name Kirin 1020. The report coming from China claims that the performance of Kirin 1020 will be double compared to Kirin 970.

But, no details related to the said chipset is available at this time. Sources say that the Kirin 1020 chipset will go into mass production once the first 5G network launches, and will soon after be used in the company’s smartphones.

The HiSilicon Kirin 970 is the company’s current top-end mobile chipset, which was the first mobile chipset in the world to have AI chip on board. It is an 8-core CPU with a clock speed of up to 2.4GHz i.e. 4 x Cortex A73 at 2.4GHz + 4 x Cortex 53 at 1.8GHz. It has a 12-core Mali G72MP12 GPU that provides a 20% performance increase over the previous generation as well as a 50% increase in efficiency.

However, the performance on the Kirin 970 is not on-par with that of Snapdragon 845 from Qualcomm, which is currently dominating the mobile chipset market. But HiSilicon’s upcoming Kirin 980 chipset is expected to have better performance than Qualcomm‘s flagship chipset as it will be manufactured using 7nm design process by TSMC.

Qualcomm has been dominating the mobile chipset market and has little to no competition in the high-end space. However, that could soon change as the companies like Huawei and Samsung are working to come up with powerful chips.

Last month, Samsung said that it was in talks with several Chinese manufacturers, including ZTE, to provide its own Exynos mobile chipsets. The company has been using Exynos mobile chipsets for its own flagship smartphones under its Galaxy lineup. As for the external customers of its mobile chipsets, it has only one client — Meizu.

Read More: Huawei Is Working On Kirin 710 Processor To Take On Qualcomm Snapdragon 710

On the other hand, a couple of months ago, Huawei said that it is not positioning its chipset business as an independent business and does not aim to generate income by selling it to other manufacturers.

(Via)

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