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Qualcomm's Snapdragon 835 is Its First 10-Nanometer SoC (engadget.com)

Posted by msmash on from the mobile-processor dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Chipset maker Qualcomm has unveiled its next-gen Snapdragon 835 flagship SOC and confirmed rumors that it will be built by Samsung using its 10-nanometer FinFET process. Compared to the current 14-nanometer Snapdragon 821 (also built by Samsung), the new CPU packs 30 percent more parts into the same space, yielding 27 percent better performance while drawing up to 40 percent less power, the company says. It also improved the design, which will yield "significant" improvements to battery life. The new chip comes with Quick Charge 4, which supports 20 percent faster charging than Qualcomm's last-gen tech. That, the company says, will give you up to five hours of extra battery life with just a five-minute charge. In just 15 minutes, it'll give Snapdragon 835 phones a half-full battery.

70 comments

  1. 5 hours? by sims+2 · · Score: 1

    How long is this thing supposed to run?
    Most smartphones only run like 3 hours tops if your actively using the screen.

    --
    Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
    1. Re:5 hours? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Obviously it depends on battery capacity and screen brightness

    2. Re:5 hours? by Dorianny · · Score: 4, Informative

      How long is this thing supposed to run? Most smartphones only run like 3 hours tops if your actively using the screen.

      screens and LTE radio's are the 2 biggest drains on battery life in mobile devices. A more efficient SOC is not going to do anything to change that

    3. Re:5 hours? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You haven't used a recent non-Apple phone recently. For example, my Samsung On7 Pro, since yesterday the screen has been on for 3 hours and 42 minutes, 50% brightness. Now still has 40% battery remaining. And this phone doesn't have the more power efficient OLED screen.

    4. Re: 5 hours? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Mediatek monkeys are still ahead. They booked TSMC's 10nm capacity years ago for a third gen decacore die

    5. Re:5 hours? by Hadlock · · Score: 1

      In most cases that I've seen, the person forgets to charge it overnight, and then needs the phone to navigate to a new address when traveling, and check in on emails periodically. Typically if you can get the phone to 50% you can nurse it the rest of the day, or at least until you can plug it in periodically throughout the day to get you back up above ~30%

      --
      moox. for a new generation.
    6. Re:5 hours? by guruevi · · Score: 1

      Even Apple phones don't drain that quickly. Mine is 3+ years old and still holds a good 8h of "active" time (regularly checking mails, a few phone calls), it used to be two full days when I purchased it although my activity has increased.

      --
      Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
    7. Re:5 hours? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      What if the LTE electronics is on the SoC?

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    8. Re:5 hours? by swillden · · Score: 1

      What if the LTE electronics is on the SoC?

      Doesn't matter. The big drain is powering the radios. It takes juice to transmit signals strongly enough that distant towers can pick them up, and to boost weak incoming signals. More efficient local processing doesn't make a significant difference.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    9. Re:5 hours? by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 2

      Trust me when I say this, Apple iPhones aren't all that special. Given the "Ingress" test is the most brutal of "Performance" testing, iPhones do not perform all that much better than similarly equipped Android phones.

      The iPhone people I know do not spend significant amounts of time on screen, except when watching movies.

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    10. Re:5 hours? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      Boosting weak incoming signals definitely shouldn't be power-hungry. Transmitting is. But as features get shifted into digital circuitry, power-efficient digital circuitry should definitely help with power-efficient communication no matter what direction we're talking about.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    11. Re:5 hours? by kangsterizer · · Score: 2

      tldr: sorry, good intentions but you're wrong, I'm right, etc.

      The way the main SOC (ie the snapdragon SOC) decides to power devices on/off (such as radio) and the efficiency of their regulators does change battery life significantly though when the device is not under active use.

      But in addition to that, the way the SOC manages it's own cores, and the way the core are built very significantly changes battery life under active use.

      But you don't have to believe me, because Samsung builds the SAME phone with 2 chipsets: the galaxy S7/S7Edge comes with the same specs and either a Snapdragon 802 from Qcom or an Exynos from Samsung themselves.
      The Exynos Galaxy S7 Edge lasts 2-3 HOURS more than than the Snapdragon version, under active use.

      Random test: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... (there's plenty more)

    12. Re: 5 hours? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The reality that you are missing is that the radio is still analog in store regardless of the signal being sent.
      In other words, you must increase the power (signal strength) or the duration of the the communication (time from when the radio transmission starts until it stops) or both in order to ensure a valid connection to cell towers; the farther the tower are from the radio or more congested the towers are with other traffics, the longer the signal is being amplified.

    13. Re:5 hours? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      screens and LTE radio's are the 2 biggest drains on battery life in mobile devices. A more efficient SOC is not going to do anything to change that

      Yes that's true.
      But with a faster SoC, you spend less time waiting for stuff to load, time in which the screen would otherwise consume energy displaying something useless.
      So in that way, a faster SoC indirectly reduces screen consumption.
      Of course it's not much, and users might spend the time saved this way on even more device use, but FWIW.

    14. Re: 5 hours? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Current phones like note 7 easily get 6 hours of screen on time.

    15. Re: 5 hours? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 2

      I'm not missing anything, it's just that 1) the RX pre-amplifier is a low power device and 2) replacing analog processing with digital enables to lower power consumption in step with digital fabrication process improvements, so if you, for example, come up with ways of improving communication that lower energy per bit transferred in the analog part but require more processing in the digital part (improved self-correcting codes, for example), then digital process improvements may be a prerequisite for such improvements.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    16. Re: 5 hours? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wut? You need to retake that RF Engineering class, and stay awake this time.

  2. Quick Charge? by Yvan256 · · Score: 1

    Maybe they could sell their technology to Tesla, Nissan, Chevrolet, etc.

    1. Re:Quick Charge? by OrangeTide · · Score: 2

      Right, because scale isn't relevant here.

      --
      “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
    2. Re:Quick Charge? by GabeGhearing · · Score: 2

      You still have to get the power into the Lithium cells quickly. The Power Management Module(PMM) inside the CPU regulates the rate at which power enters/leaves the lithium cells. This Snapdragon supports taking in larger amounts of power and shoving it into lithium cells faster.

    3. Re:Quick Charge? by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 1

      I would settle for a phone that didn't explode!

    4. Re:Quick Charge? by GNious · · Score: 1

      Well, clearly it isn't, since 15 minutes will charge any phone to half, no matter the battery, or usage during those 15 minutes.

    5. Re:Quick Charge? by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      I would settle for a phone that didn't explode!

      So buy literally any phone on the market?

    6. Re:Quick Charge? by OrangeTide · · Score: 1

      Well the differences between cell phones is probably only a factor of 4.
      A Tesla battery is a factor of 8000.

      --
      “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
    7. Re:Quick Charge? by kangsterizer · · Score: 1

      A phone battery is 1S lipo/lion of about 3000mah/12Wh. At 1C (3A) it takes 1h to charge. At 4C it takes 15min. So Qcom charges at 4C or 12A.
      A Tesla car battery is 27777777mah/85-100kWh. At 1C it is 27777A. thats.. thats a lot of energy.

      A small household uses about 100A/day (fridge, oven, burns, heating, tv, etc. Rough estimate). So you'd have to charge, in 15min as much energy as the household would spend in 277 days. That should give an idea of how much more energy is stored in a Tesla car battery vs a smart phone and why the smartphone can charge in 15min...

      Heck my RC batteries can charge at 10C (i.e. more than twice faster than the qualcom phones that aren't even out yet!)
      The Tesla supercharges charges at 125A IIRC, which is way more than .. your typical house fuse can deal with.

      Just for fun, charging a 100kWh Tesla battery pack at 4C is 400kWh. That's more than 1000A (3.6V per cell).

    8. Re: Quick Charge? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Do you do units ? What do mah and A/day mean ?

    9. Re:Quick Charge? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      FTA: "the tech is compatible with Google's new guidelines for USB Type-C charging".
      IOW, it is USB-C PD compatible.

  3. 27% better performance? by 110010001000 · · Score: 2

    27% faster than the 821 which was 10% faster than the 820. Moore's law is alive and well I see.

    1. Re:27% better performance? by alvinrod · · Score: 1

      Moore's law was about the amount of time it took to double the transistor density in a given amount of area. It's still going, it's merely that its no longer doubling quite as fast as it used to. Part of this is due to the difficulty of shrinking the process features when they get closer to the physical limits, but also because CPUs have reached a point where the performance is more than most consumers need so there's less demand for more powerful chips. I've still got an old Core 2 Duo machine that's mainly used for light web browsing. The only real reason to replace it would be to get something more power efficient.

      Mobile still has some of that drive for better performance as there's still a demand for the same order or performance, but there are some design constraints that made previous SoCs less powerful than desired. I think we'll get to another saturation point soon, but there'll be some new product in the future to replace phones that requires an even smaller package so the demand for performance will begin anew.

    2. Re:27% better performance? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      How is Moores Law still going if it is no longer doubling as fast as it used to? That was the whole point of Moores Law. Transistor count hasn't doubled in a long time.

    3. Re:27% better performance? by willy_me · · Score: 1

      Specifically, Moores Law states that the complexity (ie, number of transistors) for minimum component cost increases by a factor of two per year. Translating this to computer speed or process size is easier said then done. Several other factors impact the minimum component cost. For example, the number of defects per unit area of a specific process. And when it comes to the actual parts manufactured, designers could opt for more transistors or a reduced, albeit not as efficient (price/transistor), final price. Either way, Moores Law still applies.

    4. Re:27% better performance? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      Moore's law allows us to go parallel and that really helps with power/performance ratios.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    5. Re: 27% better performance? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Moore's law had nothing to do with cost. It also hasn't stopped. It originally said the number of transistors in a given space would double every year. It has slowed down over time, and with the introduction of 10nm processes, it is currently doubling at about every 2.5 years. There is a physical limit to Moore's law (and we're approaching it), because you can't make transistors smaller than electrons.

  4. So why is there an Intel logo on this story? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Blatant?

    Captcha: donating

  5. When will a phone be out that has this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And please not another ginormous >5.5" phablet.
    I'd buy a OnePlus 3T if it was 5 inches.

    1. Re:When will a phone be out that has this? by Game+Genie · · Score: 1

      I stumbled on my original first gen iPhone last week. It's so nice and small. Fits in my hand great. Disappears in my pocket. Almost makes me wish I could get a flagship smartphone with a screen that small (surely I would feel differently if I actually powered it on). Sadly I couldn't find an old 30 pin cable to power it up and see if it still works.

    2. Re:When will a phone be out that has this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      i wish they could make a newer phone into iphone 4s form factor..i think that was my favourite all time phone. check out the dollar store for the cable btw

    3. Re:When will a phone be out that has this? by known_coward_69 · · Score: 1

      the SE is just a little bigger than the 4S and is basically an iphone 6S with no force touch and a smaller screen

    4. Re:When will a phone be out that has this? by unixisc · · Score: 1

      You could get one of those micro-USB to 30 pin adapters for $20-25, and use it w/ any micro-USB cable that you have.

    5. Re: When will a phone be out that has this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You can get 30 pin Applephone charging cables at thrift stores for $.99. Or those big speaker charging docks for $4-5.

  6. Quick Charge? by Game+Genie · · Score: 2

    Okay, 5W@500mA is horrible, and we needed proprietary solutions to get around this on USB 2.0, but now that there is actually a standard (USB-C Power Delivery) why are they still messing around with this silliness?

  7. First to announce a 10nm SoC by edxwelch · · Score: 1

    Qualcomm is the first to announce a 10nm SoC, but there are in fact several 10nm SoC's currently in production.
    There's Samsung's Exynos and MediaTek's Helio X30 and Apple's A10x which will appear in the new iPad, all due out in first half of 2017.

    1. Re:First to announce a 10nm SoC by RightSaidFred99 · · Score: 1

      None of them are "real" 10nm, it's a big marketing con. It's closer to Intel's 14nm.

    2. Re:First to announce a 10nm SoC by edxwelch · · Score: 1

      "Real" 10nm would be where the gate length is 10nm. For that definition Intel's 10nm isn't real 10nm either.

    3. Re:First to announce a 10nm SoC by RightSaidFred99 · · Score: 1

      Not really, there are a bunch of different pieces you can look at.

      It's all marketing. The only thing that matters is price and performance (and dependencies on those things like yield).

  8. FTFY by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    you're*

  9. Quick Charge 4 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    The standard Google said is dangerous, and likely causing phones to catch fire.

    Oh, the chip's made by Samsung, well, there you go, explosive news.

  10. power? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    All that power is going to be wasted on persistent ad-server connections, telemetry "features" and apps running in the background that can't be disabled unless you're running a custom rom.

  11. Quick Charge? Hope they fixed it. by bobbied · · Score: 1

    Wasn't that the major problem with the Note 7 catching fire? Overheating the battery during a "quick charge" causing damage then poof, phone up in smoke?

    --
    "File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
  12. Quick charge? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Wait a minute. They charge... the chip? Eh, no wonder it explodes!

    Someone tell them they gotta charge the battery. That's what it is for!

  13. Can it be? by archer,+the · · Score: 1

    The first settler of Qualcomm!

  14. Intel??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    This article is about Qualcomm. Why on earth is Slashdot using the Intel logo?

    1. Re:Intel??? by Rockoon · · Score: 1

      maybe because intel doesnt know how to make 10nm production work yet

      --
      "His name was James Damore."
    2. Re:Intel??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Neither does Samsung or Qualcomm. If you think these are actual "10nm" chips you are delusional. This technology is at or very slightly ahead of Intel's 14nm process.

    3. Re:Intel??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      All these numbers have been marketing for the last 2 or generations of processes anyway.

    4. Re:Intel??? by Rockoon · · Score: 1

      Fine, Intel can't get their "10nm" production working yet.

      You did know that Intel was the first semiconductor manufacturer to lie about feature size, right?

      ..or perhaps the Intel fanboys have convinced you that everyone but Intel is doing it? Intel fucking invented it 5 or 6 enerations ago. None of their 14nm chips have any feature that is even close to 14nm in size.

      --
      "His name was James Damore."
  15. USB-C charging not enough? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Uh, didn't Google basically come right out and say future android compliance may forbid non USB-C/USB Power Delivery fast charging? Why the hell are they wasting die space and dev time on a market deadend with a sword like that hanging over their heads?

  16. Wow 10nm... almost at the theoretical limit of 7nm by Proudrooster · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Wow, this is just unbelievable. A 10nm die. It is so amazing how far we have come in just 30 years. I am truly impressed and amazed that we can carry around a 2Ghz Quad core in our pocket that is a fully functional computer. It is truly impressive, congratulations everyone!

  17. I don't get it - please explain? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I don't see how this is possible. Please explain!

    The Li batteries will hit 4.2Vish internally depending on specific chemistry, and then the V will appear to go up but it will really just be wire and batttery resistance changing. Any V below that acts as a sink not a source. Any V above that is brought down by an increase in current. Generally faster currents are better but Li cells *do* have max charge/discharge rates, normally expressed in weird units so let's not go there. So fixed V, variable I with a hard max, due to physical constraints. This means ... the Snapdragon allows a higher current? This means... that old Snapdragons were blocking appropriate amounts of current from chargers, previously!?

    Or maybe they've discovered some timing mechanism by which max charge power can be reached, better than the steady state, since maybe short excessive current bursts or something might not damage cells?

    Please explain! I really want to understand what's going on.

  18. Not nearly enough by 2ms · · Score: 0

    27% better performance means it might be in the ballpark of the Apple A9 but nowhere near the current generation A10. In other words, when it comes out we'll be the 4th year into Apple being 1.5-2 generations ahead of everyone else. Starting to wonder if we're ever going to catch up. Right now the iPhone has literally twice the performance of anyone else. How Apple did that I'll never know but it's concerning.

  19. Re: Wow 10nm... almost at the theoretical limit of by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Thanks. I deserve most of the congrats. My main contribution was to not get involved.

  20. Not fully functional by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That locked down proprietary hardware and software make it a fully dysfunctional computer.

  21. 27% faster OR 40% less power by viperidaenz · · Score: 1

    From TFA:

    Samsung’s new 10nm FinFET process, for instance, allows up to a 30 percent increase in area efficiency with a 27 percent improvement in performance or up to 40 percent less power consumption compared to the previous version.

    1. Re:27% faster OR 40% less power by aglider · · Score: 1

      I would prefer 20% less power AND 10% faster!

      --
      Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
    2. Re:27% faster OR 40% less power by Agripa · · Score: 1

      And I would prefer 100% less fire.

  22. Intel by aglider · · Score: 1

    Why this article has been labelled as Intel?
    I know Intel would like to buy Qualcom but, as far as I know, this hasn't happened yet.

    --
    Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
  23. Re:Wow 10nm... almost at the theoretical limit of by LordWabbit2 · · Score: 1

    The first computer my parents bought had a 4.7Mhz processor (single core of course) and a whopping 20mb hard drive, display had a max of 4 colours, I forget the resolution. And no it was an 8088, not a zx etc.
    Compared to that I have a super computer in my pocket, lets not even bother comparing it to my gaming rig at home.

    --
    There are three kinds of falsehood: the first is a 'fib,' the second is a downright lie, and the third is statistics.
  24. Re: Wow 10nm... almost at the theoretical limit of by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yes Grasshopper, they called that device a "PC" (or a compatible). The video was called CGA. It had 4 bit color which gave 16 colors at up to 640x200. The computer had up to 640k of RAM, and originally came with two 5 1/4 inch floppy drives that could store 360k each.