A logo sits illuminated outside the Qualcomm Inc. pavilion at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, on Monday, March 2, 2015. (Photo : Pau Barrena/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820, one of the most critical system-on-chip (SoC) solutions launched by the company, is currently being tested for some Samsung Galaxy S7 models. The biggest challenge of the Snapdragon 820 chipset is the challenge of sustaining Qualcomm's performance lead over rivals like MediaTek while adapting to the smartphone price war.
Qualcomm also finds it difficult to win back business from key customers like Samsung while retaining existing ones including Apple's iPhone from Intel, according to Rethink Wireless.
However, it is rumored that Samsung is testing the Snapdragon 820 SoC for some Galaxy S7 models, in spite of the company's increased use of in-house processor solutions. Furthermore, Samsung is supposedly manufacturing some Snapdragon 820 products. In the event the chipset manages to get into the flagship Galaxy device, it would be a crucial deal, in terms of symbolisms and volumes, after the Korean tech giant's high profile defection from the previous Snapdragon 810 because of overheating reports.
Qualcomm blamed the overheating problem on the decision to use standard ARM cores as opposed to the customized design it usually develops under its architectural license. According to Android Headlines, Qualcomm has conventionally designed its own application cores instead of using the ARM reference design.
The company does rely on generic cores, but normally for lower end SoCs like the recently announced Snapdragon 430 and 617. Going the non-custom route with the Snapdragon 810 was a way of speeding time to market particularly at the verge of increasing Chinese competition from Intel partner Spreadtrum.
The new SoC will be the first product based on its latest generation of in-house cores, Kyryo, and the corporation teases these will deliver better performance and power efficiency to any generic solutions.
The quad-core, 64-bit CPU will be incorporated closely with the Adreno 530 graphics processor and the Hexagon 680 DSP. Qualcomm claims a 40 percent increase in performance with the Snapdragon 820 in addition to a 40 percent power usage cut compared to the generation of cores and GPUs.
More importantly than the Galaxy S7, in symbolic and revenue terms, is the iPhone modem that Qualcomm has monopolized since 2010. At the time, it introduced its chipset to the iPhone 4 after displacing Infineon. However, there are rumors that Intel (initially Infineon) will regain some of the Apple smartphone business for 2016 modem, most likely with its XMM 7360 LTE modem.
The Intel win will be limited to the lower end iPhone variant since Qualcomm's X12 modem is widely evaluated to be a generation ahead of Intel's products for high performance LTE-Advanced devices.
