Samsung will manufacture 28nm Qualcomm Snapdragon chips

Yes, you read that right. Samsung, one of Qualcomm's main competitors in the business with mobile silicon, is going to help its rival produce the 28nm Snapdragon S4 SoC.

 

The reason for this is that Qualcomm's current manufacturing partner, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, better known as TSMC, can't keep up with the demand. As a result, Qualcomm has reached out to the biggest players in the business for help - United Microelectronics (UMC) and Samsung.

UMC is said to start producing the 28nm Snapdragon S4 chips in Q4 of this at the very earliest. However, it's unknown when Samsung will chime in and start the manufacturing process.

One thing is certain though - Samsung isn't happy that its own Exynos chips aren't as preferred as Qualcomm ones in the US because of their lack of LTE support, and more specifically the 700MHz band. As a result, it's swaps them for Qualcomm's Snapdragon S4 solution in order to compete in the US market.

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ZTE unveils Qualcomm S4-powered Grand X LTE

The ZTE Grand X LTE (T82) is slated to run on a 28 nm chipset, namely Qualcomm's MSM8960, which enables it to save on power usage as there will be less individual chips inside sapping your battery life.

The 1900 mAh battery will keep the dual-core 1.5 GHz Krait processor going, while an 8 MP shooter capable of 1080p video recording will attend to your photography needs.

Pricing is unknown at this time, although we do expect it to hit the Asian and European markets in Q3 of this year.

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Qualcomm butter benchmark proves Snapdragon S4 is “coolest kid on the block”

It’s no secret that the Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 is the processor most sought-after by smartphone makers this year. Qualcomm has managed to cram some impressive performance numbers and LTE connectivity into the 28nm chip, making it one of the most efficient chips on the market.

One added benefit of the Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 is the chip’s amazing heat efficiency. In order to show the difference between the heat expelled by the S4 chip and that of its competitors, Qualcomm could have simply taken thermal images of various devices while performing CPU intensive tasks. Instead, Qualcomm took a few sticks of butter and placed them on top of a few phones to see which device melts butter the slowest.

We’re not sure if Qualcomm is playing favorites in its butter benchmark test, but if you have a few spare phones running on different processors, you could easily run the butter benchmark on your own. All you need are at least two phones, a couple ziploc bags to keep your devices safe, and of course, some butter.

Check out the video below to see why “Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 is the coolest kid on the block – and we mean it literally.”

Source: HTC Source

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