Qualcomm To Announce Snapdragon 888 With 5nm Process And 5G Today

Qualcomm is opening its Snapdragon Summit today and is also introducing its new high-end platform for next year’s top smartphones on the occasion. Obviously, superstition plays a major role in the naming – the new chip is called Snapdragon 888.

The Snapdragon Summit starts at 3 p.m. GMT and, due to the coronavirus pandemic, will of course not be held in the form of an event in “real life” this year, but only as an online event. Qualcomm usually invites masses of media representatives and partners to Hawaii in early December.

The new Qualcomm SoC was previously developed under the code name “Lahaina” and has the internal model number SM8350. Anyone who thought that Qualcomm would name the chip Snapdragon 875 according to the usual naming scheme is wrong. Apparently, they want to talk about the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 5G instead.

Superstition also plays a role in the naming, after all, the “8” is probably the most popular number among the Chinese. It looks like the symbol for infinity and that makes it popular in China as a symbol of luck. Since China and the partners active there have now become extremely important for Qualcomm, the new SoC is simply called Snapdragon 888.

Snapdragon X60 5G modem one of them

Little information is available about the equipment and capabilities. The production is probably on a 5-nanometer scale at Samsung, which means Qualcomm is temporarily separating from TSMC as a partner for the production of its top chip and is relying on the Korean competitor. 

Ultimately, Samsung should also be one of the main buyers of the Galaxy S21 series. The new processor will in principle be sold again in conjunction with an external 5G modem, which is the new Snapdragon X60, which was first introduced a few months ago. By shrinking the structure width, the Snapdragon 888 will probably also bring the usual improvements in terms of energy efficiency and performance.

It is still unclear which architectures should be used. Presumably, however, one of the new ARM Cortex X1 cores is used, which, thanks to adjustments and optimizations, delivers significantly more performance than the fastest cores of the previous chip.