Samsung is Supposedly Needing to Modify the Snapdragon 820 Due to Heat Problems [Rumor]

[dgstorm]

Uh oh... The infamous heat problem with Qualcomm chips might have returned. Throughout the last year, one of the big topics of conversation has been the overheating issues faced by Qualcomm with their Snapdragon 810 chipset. The problem was so egregious that Samsung declined to use the chip in their Galaxy S6 line. For a while, the industry speculated that Sammy was just taking an opportunity to try and hurt Qualcomm's reputation so they could push their own Exynos chips.

Even when it was revealed that Qualcomm really did have heat issues with the chipset, various media outlets continued to speculate that Samsung was taking advantage of the situation to pump up their own brand name in SoC manufacturing. While that may or may not be true, the latest murmurings from the supply side world suggest that overheating problems have once again reared their ugly head for Qualcomm, but this time it is with the Snapdragon 820.

What's really interesting is that this time, instead of abandoning Qualcomm and taking advantage of the situation, Samsung is supposedly digging in deeper to help Qualcomm work out the issues. This is partly because Qualcomm is using Samsung for their 14nm FinFET manufacturing process design on the chipset, because TSMC is still stuck at 20nm. We've also heard previous rumors that Samsung has committed to using both Qualcomm and their own Exynos chips in the new Galaxy S7. This is obviously another incentive to help Qualcomm make the chipset work.

For now, take this intel with a heaping helping of salt. We haven't been able to get any additional corroboration on this piece so it's possible it is bogus. We will keep an ear to the ground and let you know.

Source: SlashGear

 

[tech_head]

No surprise here.
The surprise is that it is leaked.
I've been involved with chip design for more than 20 years.
It's always a challenge to balance performance and heat dissipation.

The question here is if the abnormal heat is static or dynamic?
That would point to either leakage being too high or the dynamic power being to high.

Interesting. The'll figure it out.

 

[MissionImprobable]

I know that there's a full write up to add additional thermal paste to increase the cooling for the HTC One M9 so it's definitely a real issue. There's been talk about this over on XDA for a little while as well. Guess we'll see what comes of it.

 

[kodiak799]

It's always a challenge to balance performance and heat dissipation.

And I wonder if we aren't seeing something similar to what happened (still is?) in laptops - chips get better and more efficient, and laptops (phones) get thinner and thinner....which by the the way "thinner" at some point becomes useless, like 4K displays on a cellphone.

I don't get ultra-thin with phones at all, not to mention the trade-offs or lack of room at times for additional hardware. Light is good, but make a phone that is more ergonomic for one hand (but first they'd have to start making phones for one-handed use again). I've actually enjoyed both the generously rounded back of the HTC Rezound and relative heftiness of the Droid Turbo as far as holding the devices for extended periods.