A large chunk of flagship phones powered by Qualcomm’s flagship Snapdragon 865 chipset has already been unveiled this year. We are halfway through the year and it appears like Qualcomm is ready to start testing its next-gen flagship chipset. Fresh reports coming from Taiwan suggest that Snapdragon 875 production has officially been kicked off by TSMC.
As per the sources cited in the report, Snapdragon 875 will be based on the company’s new 5nm process node. TSMC is said to have three 5nm nodes – regular 5nm, 5nm Plus, and an enhanced 5nm process. There is currently no word about which process Qualcomm has opted for.
The 5nm fabrication process, as expected, should include more transistors onboard, offer higher clock speeds, and be more power-efficient. Snapdragon 875 will stick to the 1+3+4 core architecture but the prime core will now most likely be the new powerful Cortex-X1 core instead of an overclocked Cortex-A78 core. We will find three Cortex-A78 cores and four Cortex-A56 cores aboard this chipset.
Cortex-X1, for those unaware, is said to offer 30 percent performance gains over the previous-gen Cortex-A77 found aboard the Snapdragon 865. The processor will most probably be coupled with the Adreno 660 GPU, as per rumors.
Qualcomm will further expand on delivering 5G connectivity with its next flagship SoC. Thus, we can expect the 5G modem to be integrated into the chipset itself. Currently, phone makers are forced to get the 5G modem if they order the Snapdragon 865 SoC. Snapdragon X60 5G modem is what should be baked into the Snapdragon 875. This 5G modem is even rumored to be baked into upcoming 5G Apple iPhones.
Apart from Qualcomm, TSMC is also said to be developing chipsets for Apple and high-end GPUs for AMD. Snapdragon 875 is still months away and will officially be unveiled later in December this year. We should see even more specs and features leaks for this flagship chipset until then.
