Snapdragon 810 delay claims resurface, despite Qualcomm denial
Talk of the Snapdragon 810 chipset being delayed has emerged yet again, just one month after Qualcomm flat out refuted the rumours.
What’s more odd is that LG already revealed its newly announced LG G Flex 2 would be carrying the chip, despite the alleged production issues.
So what’s happened this time? Well it’s the same old story – reports suggest the Snapdragon 810 is facing serious overheating issues, mirroring last year’s chatter.
For starters, Korea’s media is rife with rumours that Qualcomm is struggling to mass-produce the Snapdragon 810, as noted by GForGames.
What’s more, the Korea Times puts it down to the fact that overheating is limited performance, as discovered by Geekbench reports.
A separate report, courtesy of J.P. Morgan analysts, proposes that both the Snapdragon 615 and the Snapdragon 810 are suffering overheating issues, although it’s a more persistent issue on the latter chipset.
Related: Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 gets Cat.9 LTE support
The Snapdragon 810 is an octa-core chip, laid out in ARM’s big.LITTLE configuration.
This means that four of the cores are Cortex-A53, and the other four are Cortex-A57.
Apparently, it’s the four Cortex-A57 cores that are giving Qualcomm a production headache, as they’re overheating when the clock-rate goes north of 1.2-1.4GHz.
Analysts say TSMC – the firm that actually builds Qualcomm’s chips – will be pushing back the Snapdragon 810 production schedule back by around three months.
This will give them enough time to redesign some of the chip’s metal layers, although it could mean there won’t be an abundance of chips until halfway through 2015.
TrustedReviews spoke to Qualcomm yesterday out at CES. Although the chipset manufacturer did not discuss potential 810 delays, the company did assure us the processor would be in ‘multiple’ devices later this quarter and moving into Q2.
Related: CES 2015: What’s happened at the Las Vegas tech expo so far?
Qualcomm announced its upcoming flagship Snapdragon 810 chip last year, with the new tech boating Adreno 430 graphics, 64-bit architecture support, improved battery life, and 4K video support.
We’re expecting the chip to show up many of this year’s top smartphones, including the LG G4, the Sony Xperia Z4, and the Samsung Galaxy S6.
Fortunately for Samsung however, it has its own supercharged Exynos chip in the works that’s been rumoured to debut in the Galaxy S6.