Qualcomm's 20nm Snapdragon 810 will have to face Samsung's 14nm Exynos 7420

Recently there were reports of Qualcomm working on a modified Snapdragon 810 chipset, specially for Samsung devices, after Samsung decided to discontinue using Qualcomm chips in its flagship phones due to overheating issues. Samsung hasn’t responded if it will still go ahead and use Qualcomm chips, but even if it does, Qualcomm may have to face another issue - the launch of the 14nm FinFET Exynos 7 Octa chipset or Exynos 7420.

Samsung’s Exynos 7420 will house Cortex A57 cores clocked at 2.1GHz whereas with the Snapdragon 810, the Cortex A57 cores are clocked at 1.6GHz. Needless to say, the die-shrink to 14nm means that the Exynos 7420 should theoretically consume less power than the 20nm Snapdragon 810 chipset.

However, all is not lost for Qualcomm, as it is offers the processor cores, graphics cores as well as the 4G LTE modem, inside a single package. Samsung Exynos on the other hand only has the CPU and GPU cores inside the package whereas the 4G LTE modem is located outside and mostly made by a third party chip maker, although Samsung now has the expertise to build its own modems as well.

Samsung did not face much success with its Exynos 5410 which caused heating issues with the Samsung Galaxy S4 in 2013. With the Exynos 7, Samsung has developed its own 14nm FinFET process. Also Samsung is currently working to integrate the 4G LTE modem onto the chip package itself.

It looks like Samsung is all set to release the Galaxy S6 with Exynos 7 and LTE. The S6 will come with Samsung’s own modem which is expected to supports Cat 10 (452.2Mbps downlink and 102Mbps uplink) whereas Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 supports Cat 9 (452.2Mbps downlink and 51Mbps uplink).

According to analysts , the Exynos 7 should enable Samsung to gain a good market share in the mobile applications processor business, which is currently ruled by Qualcomm. According to sources, the manufacturing process for Apple A9 chip is also rumoured to be with Samsung this year due to the 14nm FinFET process, which is ahead in terms of time-to-market as compared to TSMC’s 16nm FinFET.

Samsung Galaxy S6 sporting the Exynos 7 Octa is expected to be showcased at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in March.