Qualcomm Snapdragon 898 Rumors Allege 4nm Process With 20% Performance Uplift
It's barely been a month since Qualcomm came out with its Snapdragon 888+ system-on-chip (SoC), essentially a goosed version of the regular Snapdragon 888 that was introduced last December. The Snapdragon 888+ is not a next-gen chipset, though. That distinction belongs to the rumored Snapdragon 898 (or 895), which could deliver a sizable bump in performance.
Nothing has been announced, so as with any leak or rumor, a dash of salt goes well when ingesting the unconfirmed information. That applies even to the SoC's name—Qualcomm's next Snapdragon part might be labeled 898 or 895, or even something else. Regardless of what it ends up being called, some supposed details about Qualcomm's next flagship mobile chip have come to light.
According to a source at Weibo, Samsung's SM8450 (Snapdragon 898) chispet will be built on Samsung's 4-nanometer manufacturing process. This, according to the leakster, will pave the way for a sizable 20 percent jump in performance (presumably referring to IPC, or instructions per clock).
The leaker also suggests the chip will run hot, though something might be getting lost in translate (via Google Translate).
Heat aside, at least part of the leak aligns with information that was tweeted out last month by Ice Universe, a reliable tipster with a favorable track record. Ice Universe indicated Qualcomm would essentially split its orders between Samsung and TSMC at the 4nm level, with the former producing Qualcomm's Snapdragon 895 chips, and the latter manufacturing the eventual Snapdragon 895+ processors.
Note that the tipster refers to Qualcomm's next flagship SoC as Snapdragon 895, not 898. Whether Qualcomm has actually decided on a final model designation or not, well, anyone's guess is as good as ours.
In any event, it has been previously rumored that Qualcomm's next top mobile chip will receive a Kryo 780 CPU infusion, based on Arm's Cortex V9 architecture. It could possible stick with a 1 x 3 x 4 core arrangement, which would translate to a singe Kryo 780 Prime core (Cortex-X2), three Kryo 780 Gold cores (Cortex-A710), and four Kryo 780 Silver cores (Cortex-A510).
It's also said to feature an Adreno 730 GPU and a Spectra 680 ISP (perhaps with quadruple concurrency), as well the inclusion of a Snapdragon X65 5G modem. So all in all, we're looking at pretty robust upgrade in the mobile space.
