Taipei, Aug. 29 (CNA) MediaTek Inc., Taiwan's biggest IC design house, has applied for a permit from the U.S. government to sell chips to China's Huawei Technologies Inc. after Washington tightened sanctions against the Chinese tech giant last week.
In a statement released Friday, MediaTek reiterated its stance that it abides by international trade regulations and was seeking a license from the U.S. government to ship products to Huawei.
MediaTek did not provide any further details on how it will apply for the permit or the argument it will make to support its case.
The moves come after the U.S. Department of Commerce added 38 Huawei affiliates to the U.S. government's economic blacklist on Aug. 17 amid escalating tensions between Washington and Beijing.
The new measures raised the total to 152 affiliates on the list since Huawei was first added in May 2019.
According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, Huawei was working through the affiliates added to the list to secure chips through third parties and evade the U.S. restrictions.
Analysts said Huawei affiliates that were not on the list previously would source chips from third parties like MediaTek, which designs chips and has IC makers already affected by U.S. sanctions to make them. That loophole has now been closed, however.
Under the expanded restrictions, MediaTek will not be able to supply chips to Huawei after Sept. 14 unless it obtains a license to do so.
MediaTek has said the new moves against Huawei were unlikely to have a material impact on its short term operations and has left unchanged its third quarter guidance which predicted its sales will range between NT$82.5 billion (US$2.80 billion) and US$87.9 billion, up 22-30 percent from a quarter earlier.
But, a European brokerage has cut its forecasts for MediaTek's earnings per share by 6 percent to NT$19.5 for 2020 and by 12.2 percent for 2021 to NT$28.73.
Just last week, it was alleged that OnePlus is going to launch a smartphone that will be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 460 SoC, which would be a first for the brand.
Now, a report by Android Central has claimed the same processor for the device. Launched earlier this year, Snapdragon 460 is one of the three processors offering Wi-Fi 6 that the chip giant launched in January 2020. The other two are Snapdragon 720G and Snapdragon 662. The Snapdragon 460 is claimed to be the first time that Qualcomm has brought so-called “performance” cores to the 400 series.
Coming back to the report that cites “an insider source” who has suggested that the device is going to launch “imminently.” The source also suggested that the handset will be launched in global markets — including the US.
This handset — which may turn out to be the most affordable handset from the BBK-owned company — is codenamed ‘Clover.’ Specs wise, the smartphone is rumoured to offer a 6.52-inch IPS LCD display with 1560 x 720p resolution. In terms of storage, the handset is expected to come in at least a 4GB RAM and 64GB internal storage variant, although there are likely to be more storage variants as well.
In terms of camera, the alleged OnePlus Clover is said to house a triple camera setup on the back where the primary camera is said to be a 13MP sensor paired with two 2MP sensors.
The report claims that the highlight of the upcoming OnePlus handset will be its 6000mAh battery, which will come paired with an 18W fast charge support.
Other features of the OnePlus Clover are going to be a MicroSD slot, capacitive fingerprint sensor at the back, and Wi-Fi ac connectivity and a 3.5mm headphone jack, claims the report.
Intel has teamed up with Square Enix’s Crystal Dynamics game studio to optimize the graphics for the upcoming Avengers game, specifically for PC players. It’s the sort of partnership that usually crops up for graphics card companies like AMD or Nvidia. While Intel wouldn’t provide details on numbers, it did confirm that the deal (which includes a two-year commitment to continue to support Avengers) is its biggest gaming deal yet.
Intel — as a company that largely focuses on the CPU, rather than the GPU — may seem like an odd choice as a game company partner for graphics-facing improvements. But the improvements Crystal Dynamics made to Avengers are expressly designed to take advantage of Intel’s prowess by optimizing tasks more suited to CPU-based computation, like the physics engine, which, in turn, allows for more GPU headroom for other tasks.
The Intel-designed improvements can be divided into three categories. There’s enhanced armor destruction, which improves the visual effects as players damage enemies. With the new system, glass shards, metal plates, and rubble that players create through combat will be generated as physical objects, which will, in turn, get tossed around the environment as players and enemies further interact with them.
The two companies say that the more realistic debris will stay persistent longer on high-end machines for added realism. In the same vein, environmental damage caused by characters’ ultimate “Heroic” attacks will be amped up, which shockwaves or energy blasts creating more rubble and interacting with the existing debris already present.
Lastly, PC players will benefit from full-fledged water simulation, which will flow, splash, and react to objects just like it would in real life. According to Crystal Dynamics, it’s improvements like this, specifically, that highlight the advantages of optimizing for both the CPU and the GPU. The company says it was already pushing the GPU side of the equation as far as it could go, and adding additional effects like water simulation to that computational load would have limited other aspects of the game. But by offsetting that to the CPU, it’s able to provide a fuller experience.
The Intel optimizations were developed for 4-, 8-, and 10-core machines, with low, medium, and high options that are tuned to each of those processor types. That means whether you have an entry-level gaming PC or a top-of-the-line rig, you’ll still get some kind of benefit when playing Avengers. That said, while these features were developed by Intel, all PC players will be able to take advantage of them in some form, not just Intel users.
The goal is for the partnership between these two companies to go beyond just the initial launch. Intel has promised to continue to support Avengers for the next two years, and Crystal Dynamics has baked these improvements into its Foundation Engine, so it’s possible that things like the water simulation could appear in future PC titles, too.
This latest gaming partnership also comes just as Intel is gearing up for its biggest gaming and graphics push yet, with the launch of its 11th Gen Tiger Lake processors, Xe graphics architecture, and standalone DG1 GPUs all slated for this fall. This sort of CPU / GPU optimization that emphasizes the strengths of each architecture is something that we can expect to see more of as Intel’s CPU and GPU efforts become more aligned.
Intel has already confirmed that it’ll be rolling out specific Avengers optimizations for future Intel GPUs, too — presumably referring to the Xe-LP integrated graphics set to debut later this week — with the company promising that the game will perform at 30fps / 1080p on upcoming ultrabook and thin and light machines.
The Intel-designed enhancements for Marvel’s Avengers are planned to roll out alongside the game as it launches on September 4th.
Much of TSMC’s (NYSE:TSM) growth comes from advanced process technology nodes, which serve to follow Moore’s Law: they deliver up to a 2x improvement in transistor density per generation, every two to three years. This provides chip designers with a larger transistor budget, of more powerful and more efficient transistors, which allows them to increase functionality. Furthermore, cost per transistor also tends to come down.
For Intel (INTC), likewise, reaping the benefits of Moore’s Law has been and continues to be vital for being able to compete with its product offerings and expand to new markets such as IoT, GPUs, and AI.
Given that Moore’s Law is an exponential trend, even being ahead by just one step could deliver a tremendous competitive advantage. For example, for gamers, a 2x better GPU could mean achieving 60fps instead of 30fps.
In a past article, I explored the future of Intel vs. TSMC. I noted that Intel had lost its lead, which it had previously firmly established with its Tick-Tock cadence, due to its 3-year 10nm delays. However, those delays were now behind, and Intel seemed to have restored its 2-year cadence goal. Meanwhile, TMSC’s 3nm node promised just a 1.7x improvement (tangibly lower than 2x) despite being on a more moderate 2.5-year cadence. This would give Intel time to catch up and go back to parity, in density, in the next several years.
At least, in theory. Since writing this article, Intel announced its 7nm delay. I have made some adjustments were necessary.
Nevertheless, as the title of the present article suggests (and what this article is about), there is more to semiconductor process technology than just the transistor density metric that investors and even tech enthusiasts mainly focus on. And, in those aspects, TSMC’s well-known and established process leadership isn’t as clear. (Indeed, while the 7nm delays were announced, Intel also announced 10nm SuperFin.)
This article should put some nuance to the common view nowadays that TSMC has a tangible lead.
For investors, while TSMC and Intel are only indirect competitors at best, process technology is, of course, one of the key discussion points related to both companies, so being aware of how these companies stack up could improve investment decisions.
Quote
For illustrative purposes, following is a recent quote by Nvidia's (NVDA) CEO, one of Intel's prime competitors:
Jensen Huang
“Process technology is a lot more complex than a number. I think people have simplified it down to an almost a ridiculous level”
Performance and Power
The argument of this article is that performance and power of transistors are just as important (as density). Nanometer numbers are already just marketing (see Intel: The Nanometer Games (NASDAQ:INTC)), instead of referring to actual transistor sizes, and say even less about how much energy a transistor consumes when switching, or how fast it can switch.
First and foremost, though, when it comes to such other metrics besides density, admittedly, they are somewhat less clear than a simple number such as transistors per area (for density). They are (also) influenced greatly by top-level design decisions. (Although the same also holds for density, it can be measured much more easily.)
Transistor Innovations
I will illustrate this aspect of transistors by running down some historical examples:
In the late 1990s, transistor performance scaling (known as Dennard scaling) was reaching a limit and preluded the end of the GHz wars. Intel invented a technique known as strained silicon at 90nm in 2001, before others followed at 65nm around 2004. Further enhancements of this technique have allowed transistors to continue to improve in drive current (performance) over time.
Further, not all transistors' features have the same length. For example, there is a relatively small insulating layer between the gate (which controls the transistor) and the source-drain (where current flows). In the early 2000s, this layer was approaching a small width measured in monolayers of atoms. Not being able to scale this further would further contribute to lower performance gains. Its small width also resulted in vast increase in leakage (due to quantum effects). To overcome these issues, Intel introduced a set of materials science innovations known as HKMG (high-k, metal gate) in 2007 at 45nm, before others copied this at 28nm around 2011-2012. These have mitigated leakage increasing to unsustainable levels, as well as allow continued feature size scaling (hence, prevent Moore's Law from ending).
Nevertheless, the historical CMOS transistor as it was known was still seen running out of steam (despite HKMG), as leakage kept being an issue. Being able to shrink features is one thing, indeed, if you can’t also reduce power and ever-increasing leakage as you make things smaller (especially relevant in the mobile era of last decade). Intel, again, led the way with developing Tri-Gate/FinFET. This was a new transistor ‘architecture’, so to speak, which allows the gate to wrap more fully around the source-drain channel. Hence, this increases current control, or in other words, reduces leakage. Intel introduced this at 22nm in early 2012, before others at 16nm in early 2015.
Of note, while FinFETs provided a step-size reduction in power, this did not help Intel succeed anyway after being late to enter the smartphone market. This was, of course, more because of market dynamics than because of technology. So, unfortunately, for Intel, since it missed the mobile revolution (because this was an evolution from phones to smartphones rather than a miniaturization of the PC like laptops), it failed to capitalize on its multi-year FinFET advantage where it would have been an especially significant advantage.
Also, of note, TSMC’s 20nm remained planar. But, tellingly, it is one of TSMC’s least successful nodes ever. The best example of this is GPUs: Nvidia and AMD (NASDAQ:AMD) both skipped 20nm, despite 20nm offering a 1.9x increase in density. It turns out more transistors aren’t very useful if there is no power budget to feed those.
Also, of note, TSMC was likely caught off guard by Intel's industry-leading introduction of FinFETs at 22nm. As explained in my Nanometer Games article, TSMC pulled-in its FinFET from its 14nm node, inserted it in its 20nm process, and called this "new" process 16nm (and hence renamed its 14nm to 10nm, 10nm to 7nm, etc.).
In the FinFET era, performance of FinFETs can be further increased by increasing the height of the fin, or using more fins at the expense of transistor density.
The reverse is called fin depopulation: using less fins per transistor. This has been possible and has happened over the generations as FinFETs increased in performance. In this way, performance improvements are actually responsible for density improvements, curiously enough.
Each of the three major materials science innovations noted above (strained silicon, HKMG, FinFET) provided Intel with a great process technology advantage, as Intel introduced them three to four years ahead of other leading edge foundries. (It was, of course, cutting edge technology innovations like these, bare none, that drew me to Intel.)
Yet, they are only loosely related to density: they were invented to continue historic scaling, but they have also provided benefits in power and performance beyond just scaling.
Interconnect Innovations
Furthermore, there is not just the transistor. Just as importantly, there is also the interconnect, which as the name implies connects transistors. By analogy: its function is that transistors would act more like a domino chain rather than individual (useless) pieces.
The interconnect stack, known as back-end of line (BEOL) consists of >10 metal layers nowadays. Several further trends can be noted here:
The interconnect is also a bottleneck for power and performance: individual transistors can actually switch at up to tens or hundreds of GHz. It is also increasingly a bottleneck for scaling.
At 14nm, Intel introduced ‘air gaps’ between a few select layers. Air, as some readers may be aware of, is one of the best insulators, so this indeed improved power and performance. Intel is still the only fab with air gaps. So, in that aspect, Intel currently has a six-year lead, and counting.
The lowest layers, most closely to the transistor, are also referred to as the middle-of-line (MOL). Here, Intel introduced cobalt (Co) at 10nm along with Ruthenium, but also used Cobalt in the lowest layers of the interconnect stack, bringing significant improvements.
While TSMC also introduced Cobalt at 7nm, this wasn’t in the interconnect, but only the MOL.
To continue transistor scaling, before EUV, the industry used multiple patterning: exposing the wafer multiple times instead of just once. Intel to date remains the only fab to have used quadruple patterning in the interconnect layers, although Intel said this was one of the reasons for its yield problems.
Intel's 10nm SuperFin's industry-first Super MIM brings a 5x increase in capacitance (at the same area) compared to the rest of industry. Clearly, this is a significant process innovation.
Intel’s chief engineer Murthy has said that the interconnect also will be important at 5nm.
More in general, all innovations noted above (except FinFET perhaps) could be referred to as materials science innovations. From the introduction dates, I noted (and even continuing through 10nm SuperFin), it should be clear that Intel’s historical materials science innovation lead and innovation are unparalleled bar none.
(Note: it isn't yet clear to what extent Intel's 2023 production goal for 5nm is impacted by the 7nm delays.)
Future
As transistors and feature sizes between transistors continue to become smaller, semiconductor innovations will still be needed as in the last two decades.
The FinFET can be further improved upon by wrapping the gate fully around the channel. In the near future, the industry will indeed move beyond the FinFET (tri-gate), to gate-all-around (“four-gate”) or GAA in short.
This will provide similar benefits as the move to FinFETs, although the theoretical benefit is not as large as planar to FinFET.
Intel will do this at its 5nm (late 2023, according to Murthy), Samsung (OTC:SSNLF) at 3nm in 2022 and TSMC at 2N in 2024/2025.
Power and performance of FinFETs and nanowires can be further increased by changing the channel material from silicon to Ge or a III-V combination.
Nanowires can be oriented horizontally or vertically.
It is unclear what the industry will do when nanowires run out of steam, but the range of options (in research) is large.
Besides moving to GAA, another future improvement could be changing the channel material (where current flows) to a post-silicon material.
Beyond GAA, there are literally dozens of future post-CMOS options in various stages of research. Spintronics, carbon nanotubes, quantum tunneling... In its research, Intel seems to favor spintronics, TSMC carbon nanotubes, although nothing is yet really moving to development.
Intel in 2018-2019 announced a highly futuristic possible post-CMOS quantum device it is researching, called MESO.
Intel possibly moving to gate-all-around (GAA) aka nanowires at 5nm ahead of TSMC 2N strongly indicates that Intel could still continue to lead in this materials science and transistor innovation aspect of Moore's Law, even if it is somewhat behind in density.
It also shows the "nanometer games" as I called it, as Intel's 5nm could be just as advanced as TSMC's 2N, despite the seemingly vast difference in name. (For comparison, a silicon atom is about 0.2nm.)
Sub-threshold Slope
As a slightly more technical section (if the others aren't already, but feel free to skip), to illustrate one metric (transistor specification) other than transistor density, there is a key transistor metric known as the sub-threshold slope.
Transistors themselves aren't as binary as computer programmers are used to. In general, drive current increases as a voltage is applied to the gate. Moreover, as the term leakage implies, even a transistor in the 'off' state can still have some current flowing.
Being 'on' or 'off' requires a difference in drive current of several orders of magnitude in most chips. Given there is only a finite increase in drive current as voltage is increased, this means there is some minimum voltage required for a transistor to be considered 'on', called the threshold voltage.
Therefore, the (exponential) rate at which current increases (when increasing the voltage) determines this threshold voltage. Therefore, technologies that can improve this metric could allow for a substantial reduction in operating voltage. And since power/energy scales quadratic in function of voltage, this could lead to serious improvements in the power consumption and energy efficiency of chips (although perhaps at the cost of peak performance).
This is called the sub-threshold (drive current) slope. It is measured in mV/decade: how many millivolts it takes to increase drive current by 10x. Lower is better.
For silicon/CMOS, the theoretical limit is 60mV/dec. Planar transistors achieved down to low triple-digit values (~100-120).
FinFETs, in fact, have been able to lower this down to quite close to the limit, at around ~65mV/dec. This further shows the advantage Intel had with its three-year FinFET lead. (If only Intel's leadership/management had foreseen the importance of smartphones, or the usefulness of this for GPUs, etc.)
In any case, this limit shows that beyond-CMOS technologies could further provide substantial improvements, at least with regards to power/energy consumption: other technologies could have steeper sub-threshold slopes than CMOS' 60mV/dec. Perhaps as low as ~20mV/dec or even less.
Real-world Implications
I will now summarize some of the real-world product benefits these innovations have brought:
Intel’s Core CPUs on 45nm (the HKMG node) helped it widen the gap with AMD and take back market share and definite CPU leadership (for the next >1 decade).
Intel’s planar transistor CPUs achieved around ~4.6GHz with 32nm Sandy Bridge. Given that FinFETs mostly reduced power with less focus on performance (initially), its 22nm successors Ivy Bridge regressed in clock speed.
However, improved FinFETs (taller, more rectangular), air gaps and perhaps others techniques have allowed 14nm Skylake to eventually beat planar transistors in performance, and 14nm++ today achieves up to 5.3GHz (single core) in commercial products.
Ice Lake (10nm) reached 3.9GHz in its 15W configuration, 4.1GHz at 28W. Tiger Lake (10nm SuperFin) is set to improve this to ~4.8GHz. This shows that process enhancements can continue after process introduction and result in significant improvements (even if in this case just to go back to parity with the previous generation).
AMD’s Zen hardly surpassed 4.0GHz. 7nm-based Zen 2 has improved this, but still readily trails 14nm++ in frequency.
As noted above, Nvidia and AMD both skipped 20nm because it lacked FinFET (and an HP-focused design library). Also, 20nm didn’t improve cost per transistor. Just like with power, you can’t really implement more transistors – make use of Moore’s Law – if the cost per transistor doesn’t decline.
Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 600 at the time (if I remember correctly) was a meaningful improvement over the Snapdragon S4, despite being the same architecture, but it was upgraded from 28nm to TSMC’s 28nm version with HKMG (which TSMC had so diligently copied from Intel four years after Intel).
Intel’s 22FFL process, announced in 2017 as a low-cost FinFET process, features an ultra-low leakage transistor with 100x lower leakage. TSMC simply has no equivalent/competition for this at all, as its own competing process uses a planar transistor. Or had no equivalent, as TSMC recently announced such a 12nm variant. This means TSMC, seen as the world's leading foundry, is lagging behind Intel by 3-4 years in introducing a mainstream FinFET node.
While again also (or even: mostly) a function of product design, Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) has yet to reach 3GHz frequency for its CPU cores. So, even if Apple has a somewhat better architecture, Intel CPUs will speed right past this towards 5GHz. This is especially relevant, given Apple’s upcoming transition towards ARM-based Macs.
Lastly, people ever continue to compare power consumption of phone chips to laptop chips, or even continue to fall into the ARM vs. x86 (RISC vs. CISC) fallacy that was debunked many years ago with Intel’s short venture into phone chips (the FinFET advantage described above). But also a more modern example such as Intel’s Lakefield continues to demonstrate that its x86 chips (both Core and Atom) have no difficulty to be used in low-power designs.
Given the 7nm delays, Intel may even further develop improvements of its 10nm technology as it will now have to use this longer than planned (unless it goes to TSMC). Intel argued this would allow it to deliver another step of Moore's Law improvements (aside density) within 10nm, which 10nm SuperFin already demonstrates. To that end, perhaps some of the materials science innovations slated for 7nm(+)(+) could be introduced in the upcoming 10nm++(+).
By definition, such intra-node improvements depend mostly on materials science innovation (for power/performance) rather than density improvements.
Discussion
Transistor technology is far more than feature sizes and density numbers. Intel since the early 2000s has had a historical and significant 3-year lead in leading edge materials science innovations, with the important trifecta of strained silicon, HKMG and FinFET proving this. Further innovations include air gaps and Cobalt in the interconnect (which TSMC does not have). While not directly impacting transistor density, this is also process technology, and hence should be taken into account when comparing and discussing process leadership.
Obviously, but admittedly, if Intel had a 3-year lead in such innovations (as it did), but 10nm has been delayed by 3 years, then also, this lead can be questioned, going forward. Indeed: Samsung will move to gate-all-around ahead of Intel.
Nevertheless, such a pipeline of research and innovation does not just disappear because one node has yield issues.
Intel’s introduction of + and ++ intra-node variants with meaningful enhancements shows this. For instance, it has been said that 14nm+/14nm++ took features from 10nm. This might be one way that, for example, a 10nm+(+) or 7nm(+)(+) in the future might reduce the impact of this 3-year delay, if likewise they respectively implement features from 7nm/5nm, perhaps, and continue to show the power-performance aspect of process technology as described in this article.
Indeed, given the characteristics of 10nm SuperFin as announced, this likely could compete against TSMC's 5nm in those aspects, closing the gap in power and performance.
Or conversely, Intel might improve its execution by spreading out innovations in the + and ++ nodes, reducing the risk of combining too many features in one node.
So, summed up, power and performance (and cost per transistor) are just as critical to products and to advance Moore’s Law. You can’t use more transistors if you have no power, or cost, budget for them. For performance, especially relevant in CPUs (where most of Intel’s revenue comes from) TSMC, by no means has any performance lead that it could reasonably claim to possess (as opposed to its ~1-year transistor density lead), as the clock frequencies of Intel’s 14nm++(+++++) CPUs prove, although at the cost of a power consumption disadvantage, but 10nm (Enhanced) SuperFin will also improve this.
As discussed, all these aspects beyond density also are heavily influenced by materials and transistor science innovations.
Summary
There is much more to a process than just its density. Not all products even need the highest density in the first place. While it’s true that, in general, new nodes come with a package of benefits that includes, besides density, also lower cost, lower power as well as higher performance, some critical innovations such as HKMG and FinFET have resulted in step-size (above average) improvements in some aspects, such as leakage, even if this isn’t as easily quantifiable or predictable as density.
Historically, and even at 10nm, Intel has had a (time to market) lead in many such important innovations. A leadership in those aspects may mitigate a shortfall in density. Indeed, as I claimed in my unpublished 10nm SuperFin article, this node instead might perhaps be seen as the most cutting edge ("process leadership") node currently in production.
Implications for TSMC
Most notorious is TSMC’s short-lived 20N node because it lacked the FinFET architecture. Similarly, 3N lacks its successor, gate-all-around (while the competition is charging ahead with those), so this may or may not warrant some preliminary cautiousness about this node.
Implications for Intel
For Intel investors, the 14nm+ and 14nm++ intra-nodes should provide at least some assurance that Intel’s highly successful materials science pipeline and leadership didn’t just disappear together with the 10nm delays. In the case of 10nm, 10nmSF and 10nmESF will be helping Intel to recover somewhat. The 10nmSF of the upcoming Tiger Lake should allow Intel to compete much more readily than Ice Lake’s 10nm, as it allows for much higher frequencies. Intel has said it is waiting for 10nmESF to introduce 10nm on the desktop, also for frequency-related reasons.
In the future, while Intel won’t be the first to transition to GAA (as Samsung will be), it will still be ahead of TSMC (at the last confirmed roadmap schedules), and Intel’s historical materials science knowhow may make them able to deliver a much better implementation of this technology. For example, with GAA, one could stack multiple wires on top of each other, providing a vast density increase without having to shrink the transistor. Perhaps, that could allow Intel to regain a density lead in the future. Or perhaps, Intel has some other technologies in the pipeline that it will introduce years before Samsung and TSMC, but that is speculation (although Intel made some noise about the MESO device it has invented).
So, admittedly, it isn't sure if Intel will continue to have a definite lead here as with HKMG and FinFET, once, although 10nm SuperFin's SuperMIM shows that it will likely still remain one of Intel's strengths in process technology going forward.
Investor Takeaway
All in all, when a company announces a new process, investors of TSMC and Intel should look out if they see any special claims about it besides the standard density or PPA (power-performance-area) improvements, such as FinFET at Intel 22nm. (This paragraph was written before, indeed, Intel announced 10nm SuperFin with exactly such a "special" claim.) Again: these could be changes not related to density, but also with important benefits. Or as TSMC's 20nm shows: some aspects such as leakage might cause real headwinds if no innovations are introduced to improve those (which may or may not provide any clues about how good of a node TSMC's 3N will be).
In that respect, the next major milestone for Intel will be at 7nm, as it has claimed a substantial 4x reduction in design rules, largely due to the introduction of EUV. The implication of this should be a much faster design + ramp of products, at least if the yield allows, but EUV should also help for yield [which apparently it will not].
Next (although admittedly "next" is a recurring theme since 14nm), and for Intel now even more important, given the 7nm issues, the divergence of Intel/TSMC at 5nm/N3 with regards to gate-all-around will be the next benchmark to see whose materials science and process innovation is really up to snuff.
TSMC staying with FinFET for 3N might or might not provide a clue of who will be leading. On the other hand, if the 7nm delay also impacts 5nm (which Intel has not provided any clarifications about yet), Intel and TSMC might enter the nanowire era around the same time. In any case, the common, overly doom-and-gloom picture concerning Intel's process technology among investors, seems quite out of touch with reality and might need a serious calibration, as even Nvidia's CEO suggested.
Disclosure:I/we have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours.I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.
Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) posted Q2 earnings of $5.70 billion, an increase from Q1 of 19.05%. Sales dropped to $19.73 billion, a 0.5% decrease between quarters. In Q1, Intel earned $7.04 billion, and total sales reached $19.83 billion.
Why ROCE Is Significant
Changes in earnings and sales indicate shifts in Intel’s Return on Capital Employed, a measure of yearly pre-tax profit relative to capital employed in a business. Generally, a higher ROCE suggests successful growth in a company and is a sign of higher earnings per share for shareholders in the future. In Q2, Intel posted an ROCE of 0.07%.
It is important to keep in mind ROCE evaluates past performance and is not used as a predictive tool. It is a good measure of a company's recent performance, but several factors could affect earnings and sales in the near future.
ROCE is an important metric for the comparison of similar companies. A relatively high ROCE shows Intel is potentially operating at a higher level of efficiency than other companies in its industry. If the company is generating high profits with its current level of capital, some of that money can be reinvested in more capital which will lead to higher returns and earnings per share growth.
In Intel's case, the positive ROCE ratio will be something investors pay attention to before making long-term financial decisions.
Q2 Earnings Insight
Intel reported Q2 earnings per share at $1.23/share, which beat analyst predictions of $1.1/share.
When 5G smartphones first started appearing on the market, they cost a lot – around $1000. Now the price tag has dropped to $300- $500, and in the near future, even state employees with support for fifth-generation networks will appear.
According to Chinese sources, Qualcomm and MediaTek are already preparing 5G chips for budget smartphones, and such processors will cost less than $20. This means that the price of the gadget itself will be low – about $150.
Qualcomm currently has low-cost 5G chips, Snapdragon 690 5G, Snapdragon 768 5G, and Snapdragon 765 5G. The company is also working on a platform codenamed sm4350.
MediaTek is rumored to be preparing several budget solutions, which will be presented later by Qualcomm – in the second half of the year. In addition, MediaTek is working on Dimensity 600 series processors.
This coming week is going to be an interesting one for the computing world. On Tuesday, Nvidia will unveil its RTX 3000 series graphics cards. And for those in the market for a new ultraportable laptop, Intel will reportedly launch its new mobile Tiger Lake chips on Wednesday.
Thanks to a couple of Geekbench 5 entries, we have a pretty good idea of what to expect in terms of performance. And while this is just two chips, if similar gains are seen across the board, this could be a giant leap forward in graphical performance in slim and light laptops.
The first chip in question is the Intel Core i7-1185G7 (listing 1, listing 2) and it’s likely the most powerful Tiger Lake CPU available, which would make it equivalent to the best PC mobile chip the company currently offers: the Core i7 1065G7. And the new chip leaves the old in the dust, with a base frequency of 2.99GHz and boosted performance of 4.8GHz to the Ice Lake’s 1.3GHz and 3.9GHz.
Unsurprisingly, given the upgrade from Iris Plus to Intel Xe, built-in GPU performance also gets a significant shot in the arm. The Intel Xe based chip gets up to 96 execution units (EUs) and a max GPU clock speed of 1.55GHz to the Iris Plus’ 64 EUs and 1.1GHz.
To be entirely fair to the Ice Lake chips, there is one version that does put up more of a fight: the Core i7 1068NG7, which has a 2.3GHz base and 4.1GHz boost — but it’s exclusive to Apple MacBooks, and doesn’t benefit from the new Intel Xe GPU.
Next up is a listing for the Intel Core i5-1135G7 which, unsurprisingly, offers weaker performance, but still provides a hearty leap on its Ice Lake i5 and even i7 counterparts. With clock speeds of 2.4GHz and 4.2GHz boosted, it comfortably beats the Ice Lake Core it-1035G7 which comes in at 1.2GHz and 3.7GHz respectively. Once again, Intel Xe graphics also provides a GPU boost: 80 EUs, over the Iris Plus’ 64, with a max graphics frequency of 1.3GHz to 1.05Ghz of its predecessor.
None of these specs are officially confirmed yet, of course, but if the benchmark data does indeed prove to be accurate, then the Tiger Lake chips could be a significant leap forward for integrated graphics in laptops. And with AMD's Ryzen CPUs continuing to impress in laptops such as the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14, Tiger Lake could give Intel a powerful weapon against its constantly rising rival.
Intel's Iris Plus graphics delivered a noticeable hike in GPU power over Intel UHD graphics, but Tiger Lake is expected to deliver a two times boost over Iris Plus. Now that doesn't mean Tiger Lake chips will render dedicated graphics cards in gaming laptop redundant. But it could mean the delivery of proper 1080p gaming performance in laptops you'd usually use for more mundane computing tasks.
We've seen a clip of a Tiger Lake-powered laptop running Battlefield V at a smooth frame rate. So the idea of some proper modern gaming on upcoming laptops on the go — say a on a dull train journey — is pretty tantalizing.
We can expect to see the Tiger Lake chips in upcoming laptops like the Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 this fall.
A handful of 2020 iMac users are apparently experiencing issues due to the included AMD GPU. A recent thread on the Apple Support Forums outlines that the AMD Radeon Pro 5700 XT is the likely culprit of a screen glitch that causes random lines to appear on the display.
The latest 27-inch iMac can be outfitted with the Radeon Pro 5700 XT with 16GB of GDDR6 memory. It’s the highest-end configuration offered by Apple, but it appears to be causing display issues for users.
The original user in the App Support thread explains that their 2020 iMac will randomly show lines across the display. The user originally thought that the lines could be caused by intensive workflows and high heat. However, further testing revealed that not to be the case:
I’ve just received my new iMac and noticed that from time to time a line glitch appears on my screen. It’s completely random, I thought it was related to intensive work/heat but sometimes even when the computer is idle I see the line on the screen.
The iMac is running fine, I ran all sorts of benchmarks for CPU/GPU and it’s all OK, but from time to time I see this annoying line on my screen.
One user adds that upon further research, the likely culprit of this issue is the aforementioned 5700 XT GPU. The overall performance of the iMac does not seem to be affected by the problem, though.
Same problem with my iMac 2020, already appeared during the initial Mac setup and keeps flashing randomly since then. Searching through YouTube and google it seems this is a common problem with the 5700XT gpu that comes with it.
It’s unclear how widespread this problem is, but keep in mind that the issue affects only the highest-end GPU configuration. This likely means a small subset of iMac users is affected, but ideally, Apple will roll out a fix quickly.
This is likely to be a software problem of some sort, related to the drivers required by the Radeon Pro 5700 XT. Hopefully, AMD and Apple can work swiftly on a solution that can be pushed via software to affected users.
Are you using the 2020 iMac with the 5700 XT GPU? Do you notice this problem? Let us know down in the comments.
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Prior to writing and translating for Notebookcheck, I worked for various companies including Apple and Neowin. I have a BA in International History and Politics from the University of Leeds, which I have since converted to a Law Degree. Happy to chat on Twitter or Notebookchat.
This coming week is going to be an interesting one for the computing world. On Tuesday, Nvidia will unveil its RTX 3000 series graphics cards. And for those in the market for a new ultraportable laptop, Intel will reportedly launch its new mobile Tiger Lake chips on Wednesday.
Thanks to a couple of Geekbench 5 entries, we have a pretty good idea of what to expect in terms of performance. And while this is just two chips, if similar gains are seen across the board, this could be a giant leap forward in graphical performance in slim and light laptops.
The first chip in question is the Intel Core i7-1185G7 (listing 1, listing 2) and it’s likely the most powerful Tiger Lake CPU available, which would make it equivalent to the best PC mobile chip the company currently offers: the Core i7 1065G7. And the new chip leaves the old in the dust, with a base frequency of 2.99GHz and boosted performance of 4.8GHz to the Ice Lake’s 1.3GHz and 3.9GHz.
Unsurprisingly, given the upgrade from Iris Plus to Intel Xe, built-in GPU performance also gets a significant shot in the arm. The Intel Xe based chip gets up to 96 execution units (EUs) and a max GPU clock speed of 1.55GHz to the Iris Plus’ 64 EUs and 1.1GHz.
To be entirely fair to the Ice Lake chips, there is one version that does put up more of a fight: the Core i7 1068NG7, which has a 2.3GHz base and 4.1GHz boost — but it’s exclusive to Apple MacBooks, and doesn’t benefit from the new Intel Xe GPU.
Next up is a listing for the Intel Core i5-1135G7 which, unsurprisingly, offers weaker performance, but still provides a hearty leap on its Ice Lake i5 and even i7 counterparts. With clock speeds of 2.4GHz and 4.2GHz boosted, it comfortably beats the Ice Lake Core it-1035G7 which comes in at 1.2GHz and 3.7GHz respectively. Once again, Intel Xe graphics also provides a GPU boost: 80 EUs, over the Iris Plus’ 64, with a max graphics frequency of 1.3GHz to 1.05Ghz of its predecessor.
None of these specs are officially confirmed yet, of course, but if the benchmark data does indeed prove to be accurate, then the Tiger Lake chips could be a significant leap forward for integrated graphics in laptops. And with AMD's Ryzen CPUs continuing to impress in laptops such as the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14, Tiger Lake could give Intel a powerful weapon against its constantly rising rival.
Intel's Iris Plus graphics delivered a noticeable hike in GPU power over Intel UHD graphics, but Tiger Lake is expected to deliver a two times boost over Iris Plus. Now that doesn't mean Tiger Lake chips will render dedicated graphics cards in gaming laptop redundant. But it could mean the delivery of proper 1080p gaming performance in laptops you'd usually use for more mundane computing tasks.
We've seen a clip of a Tiger Lake-powered laptop running Battlefield V at a smooth frame rate. So the idea of some proper modern gaming on upcoming laptops on the go — say a on a dull train journey — is pretty tantalizing.
We can expect to see the Tiger Lake chips in upcoming laptops like the Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 this fall.
As of the beginning of last year when 5G first went commercial, we only had flagship 5G smartphones. These devices arrived with a price tag above $700 in most cases. However, as manufacturers continue to develop 5G, the average price of 5G smartphones in China is now about $464. Since the release of the MediaTek Dimensity 5G chips, there has been a preponderance of mid-range 5G smartphones. We currently have 5G phones that sell for about $300. However, with the current report, we will soon have $150 5G phones.
According to popular Weibo leakster, @ææșç蟟äșș, Qualcomm and MediaTek will be launching 5G chips below US$20. According to the report, the code-name of Qualcomm’s low-cost 5G chip may be sm4350. Furthermore, Qualcomm’s solution will reportedly arrive a quarter before MediaTek’s.
At present, Qualcomm’s low- and mid-end chips supporting 5G networks include Snapdragon 690 5G, Snapdragon 768 5G, and Snapdragon 765 5G. MediaTek’s mid-to-low-end chips supporting 5G networks include Dimensity 820, Dimensity 800, Dimensity 800U, and Dimensity 720.
According to reports, MediaTek will release 2~3 5G chips in the second half of this year. Furthermore, the Taiwanese chip maker will also release the Dimensity600 series chips. There are reports that the Dimensity 600 series chips already have large orders. A host of smartphone manufacturers have already confirmed that they will release phones with MediaTek’s chips in the second half of the year.
As the price of 5G chips reduces, so is the overall price of 5G smartphones. According to IDC’s recent report, the global smartphone market will grow by 9.5% year-on-year in 2020. The report shows that the market will ship about 1.2 billion units this year. Furthermore, Statista’s data shows that there has been a significant decline in the average price of 5G mobile phones in China. As of Q3 2019, the average price of 5G mobile phones in China was $711. However, in less than a year, the average price of 5G phones in China is now $464. This is basically due to the preponderance of mid-range 5G chips and smartphones.
IDC data shows that the top smartphone manufacturers have significantly reduced their 4G model shipments. However, consumer demand for 5G mobile phones will be very low this year. If you take into account the economic problems in many regions, the deployment of 5G will not be fast. To this end, it will be particularly important to reduce 5G model hardware costs and operators’ 5G service costs.
The Chinese smartphone manufactures Huawei is currently leading the global market based on the shipped volume, despite the US government blacklisted this company. That means Huawei can’t make any business deal with any US-based companies. Later, the US President added more restrictions that prevent other SoC maker companies to manufacture and sell Kirin or any other chips, for Huawei, using the US technologies. To do that, special permission will be needed from the Trump authority.
As a result of the freshly announced guidelines, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd (TSMC) already declared that it is not taking further orders from Huawei and also stop manufacturing HiSilicon Kirin processors. Now, MediaTek finds a golden opportunity in this condition. Earlier multiple reports were leaked explaining MediaTek’s interest to replace Kirin chips. Means, MediaTek is aiming to supply its SoCs for the next Huawei devices.
A few days back, the company confirmed all the earlier reports and announced that it already applied to the US government to release millions of chips for the Chinese smartphone brand after 15th September.
If everything goes positive, MediaTek will power all the next Huawei smartphones. As the smartphone industry is moving towards 5G technology, it’s very obvious that the demand for the Dimensity chip will go high.
Besides, the fact that Huawei is leading the global smartphone market still now remains, and in the worst case can slid down its position by one step after this quarter. On the other hand, MediaTek can capture a great size of the market by taking advantage of it. No doubt, the competition with its sole rival Qualcomm will become much more exciting.
Qualcomm has been a fixture in the smartphone industry since the late 2000s by providing Snapdragon processors and modems to the biggest players in the space. It’s the firm’s flagship silicon — the Snapdragon 800 series — that gets the most attention these days, and for good reason.
The US designer’s high-end chips have earned a reputation for being the top Android phone processors for a couple of years now — bringing a powerful CPU, class-leading graphics, and the latest connectivity.
We’ve charted the Qualcomm Snapdragon history for its flagship SoC series. Join us as we go from the beginning all the way to the current pinnacle of Qualcomm silicon.
The Snapdragon 800 series sits atop the pile today, but the series didn’t adopt the 800 moniker until early 2014.
Instead, Qualcomm’s first flagship processors for the modern smartphone era were members of the Snapdragon Sx series, ranging from the Snapdragon S1 to the S4 Plus range. These chip families spanned from the late 2000s to 2013 and varied wildly in terms of capabilities.
The early Snapdragon S family chipsets were notable at the time thanks to their 1GHz clock speeds — albeit with single-core CPU designs. The series then followed the general industry trend of going from single-core to dual-core CPUs. We also saw Qualcomm hopping from a custom Scorpion CPU core to its Krait 200 cores.
One constant — for the most part — was the use of Adreno GPUs, which were borne out of Qualcomm’s acquisition of AMD’s mobile division. We say “for the most part” because the first Snapdragon S1 chipset (MSM7225) lacked a GPU, and forced the single-core CPU to do all the heavy lifting. Could you imagine a modern smartphone processor lacking dedicated graphics hardware in 2020?
Otherwise, we also got Bluetooth 2 to 4.0 capabilities, LPDDR to LPDDR2 RAM support, and 65nm to 45nm designs.
While there was some overlap, Qualcomm began to move away from the S series in early 2013 following the launch of the 28nm Snapdragon 600 chipset. This was adopted as the high-end chipset of choice by most Android OEMs at the time. It’s easy to see why too. It offered a powerful quad-core CPU design — featuring Krait 300 cores — while also supporting 1080p screens.
Snapdragon 400 series silicon powered classic phones like the Samsung Galaxy S4 and HTC One M7.
The Snapdragon 600 also came at a time when multi-core processors were gaining traction fast with the likes of Samsung and MediaTek going so far as to offer octa-core designs. However, Qualcomm showed that quality is more important than quantity when it comes to CPU cores.
Other notable specs seen on the Snapdragon 600 include LPDDR3 RAM support, a camera up to 21MP, 1080p video recording, a 28nm design, 2.4Ghz/5Ghz Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4, and Quick Charge 1.0.
Notable Snapdragon Sx phones: BlackBerry Z10, HTC Sensation 4G, Nokia Lumia 1020, Sony Ericsson Xperia X10, Sony Ericsson Xperia Play, Samsung Galaxy S Plus.
Notable Snapdragon 400 series phones: HTC One M7, LG Optimus G Pro, Oppo N1, Samsung Galaxy S4.
Did you know: The Snapdragon S4 Pro, which was one of the last chips in the Sx series, is essentially a Snapdragon 600 Lite (featuring tweaked CPU cores, for one). This particular processor made its way into phones like the LG Nexus 4, LG Optimus G, and Sony Xperia Z.
Snapdragon 800, 801, 805: Laying the foundation
Qualcomm followed up the Snapdragon 600 with the first Snapdragon 800 processors in its history. We got the Snapdragon 800 chipset in early 2013 and the Snapdragon 801 in early 2014. The 28nm Snapdragon 800 and 801 made for a big jump over the Snapdragon 600, while the 600 series naming convention was used for the mid-range segment from here on out.
The Snapdragon 801 is an incremental upgrade over the Snapdragon 800, featuring slightly faster CPU and GPU clock speeds and improved endurance. Otherwise, they’re both 32-bit chips with quad-core Krait 400 CPU designs and Adreno 330 graphics. Qualcomm’s first Snapdragon 800 processors also offered support for Quick Charge 2.0, LPDDR3 RAM, Bluetooth 4.0, and 2K screens.
This generation marked the first Snapdragon flagship processors to offer 4K video recording with the likes of the Galaxy S5 and Sony Xperia Z2 all offering UHD recording as a result. Performance and/or storage requirements often meant that these early phones were restricted to a few minutes of 4K recording at best.
Snapdragon 800/801
Snapdragon 805
CPU
4x Krait 400 CPU
(2.3Ghz for 800, 2.5Ghz for 801)
4x Krait 450 CPU
(2.7Ghz)
GPU
Adreno 330
Adreno 420
Camera
21MP single
4K/30fps video recording
55MP single
4K/30fps video recording
Modem
150Mbps downlink
50Mbps uplink
300Mbps downlink
50Mbps uplink
Bluetooth
4.0
4.1
Quick Charge
2.0
2.0
Manufacturing process
28nm
28nm
Qualcomm would follow up with the Snapdragon 805 in late 2014, landing in the Motorola Nexus 6, and Samsung Galaxy Note 4 range. It would prove to be the last major 32-bit flagship processor from the company, and what a swansong it was on paper.
The Snapdragon 805 differed from the previous Snapdragon 800 series SoCs by offering tweaked CPUs with higher clock speeds, an all-new Adreno 420 GPU, 4K display support, 300Mbps LTE downlink speeds, UFS support, Bluetooth 4.1, and support for 55MP cameras.
Notable phones: HTC One M8, LG G3, LG G Flex, OnePlus One, Samsung Galaxy S5, Samsung Galaxy Note 4, Sony Xperia Z2.
Did you know: The Snapdragon 600 and 800 chipsets actually got announced at the same time with the Snapdragon 600 appearing in devices in the first half of the year. Meanwhile, the 800 chipset landed in devices in the second half of 2013.
Snapdragon 808 and 810: Enter the 64-bit era
Apple caught the Android world napping when it launched the iPhone 5s in late 2013 featuring the first 64-bit smartphone chipset. Qualcomm didn’t have a response ready for 2014, but served up its first 64-bit flagship processors in 2015 with the 20nm Snapdragon 808 and 810.
The Snapdragon 810 was the more powerful chipset on paper, delivering an octa-core design for the first time in its flagship tier (4x Cortex-A57 and 4x Cortex-A53) and Adreno 430 graphics. Meanwhile, the Snapdragon 808 offered a hexa-core CPU (2x Cortex-A57 and 4x Cortex-A53) and slightly less capable Adreno 418 graphics.
Snapdragon 808
Snapdragon 810
CPU
2x Cortex-A57
4x Cortex-A55
4x Cortex-A57
4x Cortex-A55
GPU
Adreno 418
Adreno 430
Camera
21MP single
55MP single
Modem
450Mbps downlink
50Mbps uplink
450Mbps downlink
50Mbps uplink
Bluetooth
4.1
4.1
Quick Charge
2.0
2.0
Manufacturing process
20nm
20nm
The Snapdragon 810 shared plenty in common with the Snapdragon 800/801, such as Quick Charge 2.0, 4K display support, UFS storage, Bluetooth 4.1, and 55MP camera capabilities. As for the Snapdragon 808, it had a lot in common with its stablemates too, but lacked 4K display support and 55MP output.
It’s widely believed that the Snapdragon 810 ran a little too hot for some brands. There were reports that phones released early in the year all suffered from thermal-related issues at first. The firm released a Snapdragon 810 V2.1 chipset in the second half of 2015 with the claim that it ran “cooler than ever.” This tweaked SoC appeared in the likes of the OnePlus 2 and Xiaomi Mi Note 10 Pro.
Notable phones: HTC One M9, Huawei Nexus 6P, LG G4, LG G Flex 2, LG V10, OnePlus 2.
Did you know: 2015 was the last time that Samsung’s flagships were powered entirely by an Exynos processor, ostensibly due to the Snapdragon 810’s thermal challenges.
Snapdragon 820: Back to basics
Qualcomm’s reputation took quite a beating in 2015 due to the Snapdragon 810, but 2016 showed that the firm could still deliver powerful, well-rounded processors. The Snapdragon 820 saw the firm revert to fully custom CPUs and a quad-core design, using the Kryo name for the first time.
The switch to fewer CPU cores didn’t seem to harm the Snapdragon 820 either — at least for single-core tasks. The Adreno 530 GPU brought a stated boost of up to 40% over the Snapdragon 810’s GPU. The new flagship silicon also served up the Vulkan graphics API, which delivers improved performance in games and apps that support it.
Qualcomm launched the Snapdragon 821 in the second half of 2016, delivering slightly better CPU and GPU performance as well as slightly better power consumption. Other than that, the two chipsets were identical. The two SoCs also served up Quick Charge 3, support for LPDDR4 RAM, Bluetooth 4.1, Cat 12 LTE (600Mbps down) and 28MP single cameras.
It’s also worth noting that the Snapdragon 820 and 821 formed part of Qualcomm’s major push into heterogeneous computing via the Hexagon 680 digital signal processor (DSP). That is, Qualcomm offloaded tasks from the CPU and GPU to the DSP — and eventually other bits of silicon — in the name of speed or power efficiency.
Tasks that can be offloaded to the DSP include computer vision, fitness tracking, and some image processing. This is one of the more important trends in the history of Qualcomm Snapdragon processors because it shows that a CPU, GPU, and modem isn’t enough to compete in this space. It would only rise in importance in the following years.
Notable phones: Google Pixel series, HTC 10, LG G5, LG G6, LG V20, Samsung Galaxy S7 series, Xiaomi Mi 5.
Did you know: The Snapdragon 820 and 821 remain the last flagship Snapdragon phone processors to use fully custom CPU cores. Samsung would launch its first custom CPU in 2016 — seen in the Exynos 8890 — but it killed off the division responsible for this project in late 2019.
Snapdragon 835: A blueprint for the future
The Snapdragon 835 in 2017 was a notable release for the company as it established a couple of traditions that the firm still maintains to this day. For starters, Qualcomm ditched its custom CPU strategy entirely in favor of using semi-custom Arm CPU designs (4x Cortex-A73 and 4x Cortex-A53). Another tradition established with the Snapdragon 835 was the switch to octa-core CPU designs instead of quad-core as seen on the Snapdragon 820 and 821.
Qualcomm also took heed of the dual camera trend established in 2016 by explicitly offering dual-camera support for the first time in the tier — namely 16MP plus 16MP or 32MP single. Other notable multimedia features include better zoom capabilities, HDR video recording, and HEVC support.
Unlike the previous year, Qualcomm didn’t have a mid-year refresh — a Snapdragon 836 or 835 Plus, if you will. Qualcomm would buck this trend the following year too. Other noteworthy features include the Adreno 540 GPU, Bluetooth 5, Gigabit LTE, Quick Charge 4, and support for HDR screens.
This chipset also made its way into Windows laptops for the first time in the Qualcomm flagship series. Unfortunately, these first laptops and/or convertibles disappointed when it came to power and app compatibility — a challenge that Qualcomm, Microsoft, and partners continue to tackle today.
Notable phones: HTC U11 Plus, LG V30, OnePlus 5, OnePlus 5T, Samsung Galaxy S8 series, and Xiaomi Mi 6.
Did you know: One thing you won’t find on the Snapdragon 835 is 4K/60fps recording. The feature was missing from both Samsung Galaxy S8 variants even though the Exynos chipset powering the international variant supported the recording standard.
Snapdragon 845: Still powerful today
Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon 845 at the end of 2017, which powered a plethora of smartphones in 2018 and was considered one of the better Snapdragon processors in the firm’s history. It delivered Arm’s DynamIQ CPUs for the first time (4x Cortex-A75 and 4x Cortex-A55) for improved power and energy consumption as well as the Adreno 630 GPU. The latter promised a 30% graphical rendering boost over the previous year’s high-end chipset.
The Snapdragon 845 also launched in the wake of dedicated machine learning silicon becoming a feature, as Huawei’s Kirin 970 debuted a Neural Processing Unit (NPU) months before Qualcomm’s launch. The firm didn’t offer dedicated ML silicon of its own in the 845, but it served up an upgraded Hexagon DSP for on-device processing of voice, imaging, computer vision, and other tasks.
This processor initially offered the same camera support — 16MP plus 16MP dual, 32MP single — as the Snapdragon 835, but Qualcomm retroactively brought support for 48MP multi-frame shots and 192MP snapshots. Other noteworthy camera-related features included 4K/60fps recording, 4K HDR video recording, and multi-frame noise reduction.
The Snapdragon 845 also pushed AR/VR/XR in a big way by supporting features like six degrees of freedom and foveated rendering. Toss in features like Quick Charge 4-plus, TrueWireless tech for improved wireless audio, and a secure processing unit (SPU) for security and you’ve got a full-featured package that should still keep you going today.
Notable phones: Google Pixel 3 series, HTC U12 Plus, OnePlus 6, OnePlus 6T, Poco F1, Xiaomi Mi 8.
Did you know: Qualcomm also released a tweaked version of the Snapdragon 845 for laptops, dubbed the Snapdragon 850. It features a higher clock speed and several other minor tweaks.
Snapdragon 855 and 855 Plus: A return to mid-year refreshes
The Snapdragon 855 changed the fundamentals in a big way in 2019, taking a page out of MediaTek and Huawei’s book by offering a three-tiered CPU layout. So, you’ve got one high-end CPU core when you need plenty of power, three CPU cores for mid-weight tasks, and four CPU cores for light activities.
Combine the new CPU layout with a 7nm design for the first time and you’ve got the recipe for a powerful chipset that’s efficient too. The Snapdragon 855 Plus — launched in mid-2019 — would bring a clock speed boost to the top-end CPU core and the Adreno 640 GPU. Otherwise, it’s identical to the vanilla 855.
This was the firm’s first 5G-enabled chipset, albeit via the addition of an external X50 or X55 modem. Otherwise, the SoCs offered impressive 4G support, topping out at 2Gbps.
This also marked the first time we saw Qualcomm offer dedicated machine learning hardware, as its Hexagon Tensor Accelerator is a bit of silicon that forms part of the Hexagon DSP. So, machine learning tasks like voice recognition, speech-to-text, and more should be faster and more power-efficient.
Qualcomm also concentrated on multimedia in a big way with the 855 series, starting with camera support. The firm debuted a so-called computer vision ISP (CV-ISP) for more advanced photography and videography, enabling HDR10 Plus video capture, 4K HDR video capture with portrait mode, 480fps slow-motion video, and HEIF/HEVC capture. Otherwise, the SoC sports the ability to capture 192MP snapshots, 48MP images with multi-frame processing, and 22MP dual camera capabilities.
Gaming was another big focus area for the firm with this generation of chipsets, which saw the company introduce the Snapdragon Elite Gaming suite of features for the first time. More specifically, the suite reduced jank/judder and offered anti-cheat extensions.
Another notable addition in this generation was the FastConnect suite, as Qualcomm decided to brand its wireless connectivity feature-set. The FastConnect 6200 platform includes Bluetooth 5.1 and Wi-Fi 6.
Other key features include Quick Charge 4-plus, a voice assistant accelerator, aptX Adaptive audio for more resilient wireless audio, and ultrasonic fingerprint support.
Notable phones: Asus ROG Phone 2, Asus Zenfone 6, LG G8, OnePlus 7/7T series, Samsung Galaxy S10 series, Xiaomi Mi 9T Pro/Redmi K20 Pro
Did you know: Much like the Snapdragon 835 and Exynos 8895, Samsung’s Exynos 9820 had a video feature that the Snapdragon 855 lacked in 8K video recording. Unfortunately, as we saw with the Galaxy S8 series, the Exynos version of the Galaxy S10 series still didn’t offer 8K.
Snapdragon 865 series: The high cost of 5G
The latest Snapdragon flagship processor is perhaps the most controversial entry in Qualcomm history since 2015’s Snapdragon 810. This time there’s no doubting that the Snapdragon 865 is a world-class performer packed to the gills with features while also being the fastest Android phone processor around.
Unfortunately, the biggest reported problem is the price. Severalsources point to a steep price increase from the Snapdragon 855 series to the Snapdragon 865. For the most part, this has resulted in manufacturers needing to pass this cost to consumers as well, with even the likes of OnePlus and Xiaomi offering drastic price leaps.
Qualcomm bundled a separate 5G modem (X55) with every Snapdragon 865 SoC, which means that even Snapdragon 865 phones in markets without 5G have the high-speed modem inside them. On the one hand, this means the device is ready for 5G when it comes to your market — provided it has other 5G components too. On the other hand, you’re paying a premium for mandatory 5G components even if you’re happy with 4G.
In any event, the Snapdragon 865 offers a similar triple power domain CPU arrangement as the 855 series. So, that means four Cortex-A77 cores — one prime core and three medium cores — and four Cortex-A55 cores for efficiency. We’ve also got the Adreno 650 GPU, which continues the trend of being a top-notch performer for advanced gaming.
200MP single / 64MP single with Zero Shutter Lag
24MP dual camera
Hybrid AF, HDR video, multi-frame noise reduction
200MP single / 64MP single with Zero Shutter Lag
24MP dual camera
Hybrid AF, HDR video, multi-frame noise reduction
Quick Charge
4+
4+
Bluetooth
5.2
5.1
Process
7nm FinFET
7nm FinFET
Meanwhile, the Snapdragon 865 Plus arrived in July and cranked the prime core to 3.1Ghz, passing the 3Ghz barrier for the first time in the series. It also offered 10% faster graphics performance compared to the standard chipset. Another notable difference is that the Plus variant sports Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2 connectivity instead of Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.1. Otherwise, the two chips are essentially identical.
Both chipsets have what is arguably the most impressive suite of camera features in a smartphone processor to date. Qualcomm’s 2020 flagship SoCs support 200MP snapshots, 64MP shots with multi-frame processing, and 25MP plus 25MP dual camera support. The crazy camera specs don’t end there. The silicon is also capable of essentially unlimited 960fps video, 8K video recording, and simultaneous 4K HDR video/64MP photo capture.
Other noteworthy features include aptX Voice for voice calls over Bluetooth, mmWave and sub-6Ghz 5G, Quick Charge 4-plus, an AI engine that delivers twice the performance of its predecessor, and support for a 144Hz refresh rate.
Notable phones: Asus ROG Phone 3, LG V60, OnePlus 8 series, Oppo Find X2 Pro, Samsung Galaxy S20 series (US), Xiaomi Mi 10 series.
Did you know: The Snapdragon 865 series is the first flagship silicon to offer GPU driver updates via app stores, sidestepping the traditional OTA update process. Oppo’s Find X2 series and Xiaomi’s Mi 10 range are among the first to offer this capability.
Snapdragon 875 and beyond
Now, rumors have been swirling around for several months that Qualcomm is working on the Snapdragon 875, although this seems like a given. At least one Qualcomm employee’s LinkedIn profile has yielded the SM8350 code-name — the Snapdragon 865 series is code-named SM8250.
There are a few questionable leaks out there at the moment, but one feature we’re almost guaranteed to see is Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 5 technology. The firm has been stuck on the same fast-charge standard for several years now, so the new standard — pegged at 100W+ — is long overdue.
Another addition we’re expecting to see is the use of the Cortex-X1 and/or Cortex-A78 CPU cores. Arm announced both cores earlier this year, with the A78 being a follow-up to the Cortex-A77 seen in the Snapdragon 865 range. However, the Cortex-X1 takes a completely different route, targeting Apple-like performance by prioritizing power over efficiency. In other words, we wouldn’t be surprised if the X1 is used as the prime core while the Cortex-A78 is used for the medium CPU cores.
Another potential area of improvement for Qualcomm is in the modem space, as we’d expect the new processor to offer an integrated 5G modem. This would be a welcome change compared to the dedicated modem bundled with the 865 series, and should deliver power and cost savings.
One rumor pointed to the Snapdragon 875 silicon seeing a major price increase over the already expensive Snapdragon 865. We don’t believe this to be the case at all though. Could we even see a cheaper price tag than the Snapdragon 865? Well, we can always hope.
That’s about it for our look at Qualcomm Snapdragon history for the 800 series. Did we miss anything? What do you want to see from next year’s silicon? Sound off in the comments below!
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