Qualcomm revealed the name of its newest SoC, the Snapdragon 835, at its Snapdragon Technology Summit in New York today. The new SoC replaces the Snapdragon 820/821 at the top of its lineup. While Qualcomm is not yet ready to disclose the specifics about what’s inside the Snapdragon 835, it did confirm one important detail.


Keith Kressin (left) and Ben Suh (right) holding Snapdragon 835, the first 10nm SoC

Keith Kressin, Senior Vice President of Product Management at Qualcomm, took the stage with Ben Suh, Senior Vice President of Foundry Marketing at Samsung Systems-LSI, to announce that the Snapdragon 835 will use Samsung’s 10nm "10LPE" FinFET manufacturing node. We do not know the Snapdragon 835’s power or performance numbers yet, but according to Samsung its 10nm process “allows up to a 30% increase in area efficiency with 27% higher performance or up to 40% lower power consumption.” The switch from 14nm to 10nm, along with other changes, give the Snapdragon 835 a smaller die size than the Snapdragon 820 SoC, and should also help improve battery life.

The Snapdragon 835 is already in mass production and on schedule to appear in commercial devices during the first half of 2017.

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  • jjj - Thursday, November 17, 2016 - link

    Do note that the 10nm over 14nm claimed numbers are vs 14LPE not LPP..
  • witeken - Thursday, November 17, 2016 - link

    Those performance and power numbers are completely meaningless anyway since no one ever mentions what was *actually* measured in the lab (at least not in the marketing foils).
  • witeken - Thursday, November 17, 2016 - link

    So for example if it is 27% faster at 0.6V, then that would be completely irrelevant because that says nothing about the behavior at 2.4+GHz.
  • lilmoe - Thursday, November 17, 2016 - link

    They're not meaningless when you compare a node shrink from the same fab. All you need to know is that Samsung 10nm LPE is in fact smaller and more dense than Samsung 14 LPP (or as op mentions, 14nm LPE).
  • Jumangi - Thursday, November 17, 2016 - link

    Another 800 series chip. So a mediocre bump in speed and battery life(maybe). Qualcomm has become the Intel of non Apple devices so they can get away with minimal updates and sell millions more chips cause no one else competes.
  • jordanclock - Thursday, November 17, 2016 - link

    What do you mean "another 800 series chip? The 800-series is a performance category, not a model. The Snapdragon 800 is as different from the 820 as an Intel Core 2 is different from a Core i-series.
  • Meteor2 - Thursday, November 17, 2016 - link

    That I did not know. Thanks!
  • Prod1702 - Thursday, November 17, 2016 - link

    I am sure what he is talking about is that there is no one out there other then Qualcomm making good high end chips. Intel and AMD is the same. AMD can not put anything out at the same level as Intel.
  • fanofanand - Thursday, November 17, 2016 - link

    Check back in six months, AMD looks to have a decent chip in Zen
  • eldakka - Thursday, November 17, 2016 - link

    I'll take another look zen.

    And if all goes well, zen we might have some competition back in the x86 space.

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