Latest news with #chipsets
Phone Arena
06-07-2025
- Business
- Phone Arena
If Samsung Foundry gets this job, the whole industry should be prepared for a major shakeup
Last year, Samsung Foundry's inability to make enough Exynos 2500 APs due to Samsung Foundry's low yield cost Sammy a ton of money. The original plan was for Samsung to power the base Galaxy S25 and the Galaxy S25+ models in most markets with the homegrown Exynos 2500 AP. Unable to build as many Exynos 2500 SoCs as it needed, Samsung ended up using Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy APs on all models which cost Samsung an extra $400 million that it hadn't expected to need. Samsung faces a similar issue with next year's Galaxy S26 and Galaxy S26 + models. The difference this time is whether the company's foundry can manufacture enough Exynos 2600 chipsets. A foundry's yield is the percentage of chips manufactured from a silicon wafer that are defect-free and have passed Quality Control. Most foundries aim for a 70% yield before they start to mass produce a certain SoC. Low yields can lead to higher manufacturing costs and result in a customer paying higher prices for their chips. Leaker @Jukanlosreve says that Samsung Foundry is in line to get an important order for chips from Nvidia. | Image credit-X Samsung Foundry is trying to make a comeback. As we noted, it hopes to improve its 2nm yield fast enough to produce enough Exynos 2600 APs to power the Galaxy S26 and Galaxy S26 + in most markets except for the U.S., China, and Canada. That could make those phones the first to employ 2nm chipsets. A report out of South Korea today suggests that Samsung Foundry is hoping to get a contract from Nvidia to build its next-gen GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) using its 2nm process node. Because GPUs use parallel processing allowing them to perform many tasks simultaneously, they are more suitable for use as AI accelerators than CPUs (Central Processing Units) are. CPU's use sequential processing which make them less useful for AI. AI accelerators significantly speed up the processing of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning workloads. The latest yield rate for Samsung Foundry's 2nm process node is 40% and by the end of the year, it is expected to hit the level that will allow the foundry to become a legitimate alternative to TSMC. Getting Nvidia's GPU business could help Samsung Foundry's reputation (which needs a shot in the arm) and its market share. At 7.7% during Q1 2025, Samsung Foundry is well behind TSMC's global market share of approximately 67.6%. Samsung Foundry might already be on the rise as it built the Nvidia designed Tegra T239 SoC that powers the popular Nintendo Switch 2 game console. The foundry used its mature 8nm Deep Ultraviolet (DUV) process node to manufacture the component taking the Tegra business away from TSMC. Secure your connection now at a bargain price! We may earn a commission if you make a purchase Check Out The Offer
GSM Arena
25-06-2025
- GSM Arena
DCS: Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 is being tested with CPU clocks over 5GHz
It seems that Qualcomm and ARM have diverging ideas on what the future looks like for smartphone chipsets. A few days ago, the popular Weibo leakster Digital Chat Station reported that ARM's new prime CPU core will have higher IPC to make it fast at lower clock speeds, which should be more efficient. Now DCS is saying that Qualcomm is aiming for record high clock speeds for the Snapdragon 8 Elite 2. The upcoming flagship chip is being tested at frequencies around 5GHz, according to the leakster. An earlier version of the post claimed 5.3GHz for the overclocked version ('for Galaxy', 'Leading Version', whatever it is called). However, DCS updated the post to clarify that such peak frequencies are only being tested to validate the design. The final frequency will be decided based on performance and power efficiency. Still, it is expected to be higher than the original Snapdragon 8 Elite – its prime cores run at 4.32GHz in the regular version and 4.47GHz in the overclocked version. 4.47GHz is the highest clock speed in a mobile device currently – previously, it was 4.40GHz for the 2024 iPad Pros with M4 chips. Let's look at what we know about the competition – all unofficial and based on leaks from early test devices, so it may not be entirely accurate. The Dimensity 9500 ran Geekbench and showed that its prime core ('Travis') was clocked at 3.23GHz. That's lower than the Dimensity 9400 and 9400+, which have their Cortex-X925 cores at 3.62GHz and 3.73GHz, respectively. Dimensity 9500 scorecard from Geekbench (OpenCL) The Exynos 2500 was announced earlier this week, it has its Cortex-X925 at 3.3GHz. Of course, we should be looking at the Exynos 2600 instead, which will be featured on Galaxy S26 models, but there are no details on that yet. It's not all about clock speed, the Snapdragon 8 Elite 2 will have second-generation Oryon cores, which will reportedly have 25% higher performance. The Adreno 840 GPU will have more cache (16MB, up from 12MB) and is supposed to deliver 30% more performance. Early benchmark results showed a single-core CPU score of over 4,000 and a multi-core score of over 11,000. For comparison, the current Snapdragon 8 Elite does around 3,100 single-core and 9,800 multi-core. Of course, we shouldn't put too much stock in leaks of early benchmarks. The good news is we don't have long to wait – Qualcomm pulled the Snapdragon Summit forward to September 23-25. Last year, the Elite was announced in late October. Source (in Chinese)
