Qualcomm’s roadmap for the second half of 2015 seems to have leaked, revealing details about what the best devices of 2015 could run on. The leak details each new CPU and what it will bring to mobile devices. According to the document, there are no signs of a timeframe for any of these processors, though other reports have hinted at a late-2015 timeframe.
Leading the pack is the successor to the current Snapdragon 810 system chip: the Snapdragon 820. Alleged specifications for the upcoming system chip show two key advancements: a quick transition to 14nm FinFet manufacturing at Samsung and Global Foundries fabs, and the roll-out of what seems like the first custom Qualcomm 64-bit CPU cores under the Taipan architecture.
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The Snapdragon 820 is expected to feature an octa-core setup with eight TS2 high-performance cores. It’s impressive that Qualcomm might be ready to iterate on the 810 so quickly and bring us a fully custom core in the second half of 2015 when we expect to see the new Samsung Galaxy Note 5, and other late-year stars.
Other Snapdragon 820 features include a new Adreno 530 GPU, support for the faster LPDDR4 RAM, as well as an advanced MDM9X55 LTE-A Cat.10 Qualcomm modem.
The other processor carries the Snapdragon 815 name and is again an octa-core design, but instead of eight TS2 cores there are four TS1 and four TS2 in a big.LITTLE configuration. The GPU of choice in the 815 is an Adreno 450, with the modem and RAM standard remaining the same MDM9X55 LTE-A Cat.10 modem and LPDDR4. The Snapdragon 815, however, will be manufactured on the 20nm node.
In the document, we see the upcoming processors listed as the Snapdragon 620, 625, and 629. The Snapdragon 625 and 629 looks identical: both are octa-core SoCs with Adreno 418 GPU, LPDDR4 RAM, a lower-class MDM9X45 LTE-A Cat.10 modem, all manufactured on 20nm HKMG Samsung/GF process.
The Snapdragon 620is an affordable quad-core chip that is said to use Qualcomm Taipan cores running at between 2 and 2.5GHz. It will come with lesser-standard, LPDDR3 RAM, but for all else is nearly identical with the afore-mentioned Snapdragon 62x series: it will feature an Adreno 418 GPU and MDM9X45 LTE-A Cat.10 modem.
Leaks also reveal a Snapdragon 616 chip that is expected to come with eight ARM Cortex A53 cores running at between 1.8GHz and 2.2 Ghz, and sport an Adreno 408 graphics chip. This SoC comes with an LTE-A Cat. 6 modem and is made on a 28nm HKMG by Shanghai-based Semiconductor Manufacturing International Company (SMIC) factory.
