With the current memory shortage, due to AI companies buying up all the RAM, companies have had to get creative to get around the surging pricing. Qualcomm is one of those companies that really impacts, as companies will try to offset those prices by going with a cheaper processor, or perhaps one from its competitor, MediaTek. But Qualcomm has a plan.
The company is apparently testing two versions of its next Snapdragon flagship chip. One that would support LPDDR5X memory, and a higher-end “Pro” variant with faster LPDDR6 memory. Both of these chips have the same core clock speeds, so the difference is just the memory type. This is likely in an effort to bring down the memory cost for OEMs, so they can still use Qualcomm’s flagship chip.
Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 is expected to be Android’s most powerful 2nm chip
This year, we’re expecting to see quite a few companies moving over to 2nm from 3nm (while Huawei is still stuck on 7nm). A lot of the ‘Ultra’ flagship phones coming in 2027 will use this new chip from Qualcomm, which is going to be manufactured on TSMC’s advanced 2nm process. This is going to bring some really incredible gains in performance and efficiency.
As is always the case, this is not going to be a cheap chipset. Qualcomm never discloses pricing, as this can vary by OEM, but industry insiders are expecting the top-tier Pro model to cost OEMs over $300 per unit, which is why Qualcomm is going with this more flexible approach.
Keep in mind that the $300 per-unit price is likely just to buy the chip, not including the royalties for actually using the chip provided by Qualcomm.
While this does seem like a bit of an overkill approach by Qualcomm, having two models of the same flagship chip, given the current situation, it’s probably the best way to go about it.
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