14 DAY TRIAL // Qualcomm, one of the leaders in chipset production for the smartphone industry, has just announced its next-generation SoC for 2017, the Snapdragon 835.
The Snapdragon 835 chipset has been made in collaboration with Samsung Electronics, as the South Korean company provided Qualcomm with its revolutionary 10nm FinFET process.
“We are pleased to have the opportunity to work closely with Qualcomm Technologies in producing the Snapdragon 835 using our 10nm FinFET technology. This collaboration is an important milestone for our foundry business as it signifies confidence in Samsung’s leading chip process technology,” said Jong Shik Yoon, executive vice president and head of foundry business, Samsung.
The new processor is the size of a single water molecule or 1,000 times smaller than a strand of hair, which is really incredible. Basically, the Snapdragon 835 CPU is made of nanomaterials, molecules and atoms less than 100nm in size that have different properties from their larger-particle counterparts.
Samsung's new 10nm FinFET process allows for up to 30% increase in area efficiency with a 27% improvement in performance or up to 40% less power consumption over the previous Snapdragon CPUs.
Even though the Snapdragon 835 is much smaller than any of the previous Qualcomm CPUs, it introduces major performance gains, while at the same time allowing handset makers to use more room in their devices for other components.
Qualcomm notes that more information about the Snapdragon 835 processor will be announced in the coming weeks, so stay tuned for more on that.
Also, Qualcomm confirmed that the Snapdragon 835 processor is already in production and expected to ship in commercial devices in the first half of 2017.
Given the large release timeframe, there's no telling whether or not Samsung will include the Snapdragon 835 inside its upcoming Galaxy S8 flagship, which is supposed to be unveiled in late February.