Leak details differences between Snapdragon 845 and Kirin 970 SoCs

TSMC may be sticking to the same 10 nm LPE and FinFET fabrication processes as the current Snapdragon 835 and Kirin 960 SoCs for the future Snapdragon 845 and Kirin 970. This is according to the latest rumors that downplay older rumors of a potential move to a 7 nm fabrication process.

The table below shows the octa-core Snapdragon 845 shipping with four unannounced ARM Cortex-A75 cores and four Cortex-A53 cores. Whether or not the chip will also implement Qualcomm's own Kryo architecture remains to be seen. Meanwhile, the integrated GPU will be the updated Adreno 630 compared to the Adreno 540 in the current Snapdragon 835.

On the other side of the ring is the Huawei Kirin 970 that will apparently be playing it safer compared to the Snapdragon 845. That is, instead of utilizing unannounced Cortex-A75 cores, the Huawei solution will use four Cortex-A73 cores and four Cortex-A53 cores. It is also expected to be the first Huawei SoC to ship with a new class of integrated GPUs called "Heimdall".

Other important features include the jump to Cat. 18 LTE with support for download rates of up to 1.2 Gbps and 1 Gbps on the Huawei and Snapdragon, respectively. Additionally, the Snapdragon SoC should natively support UFS 2.1 storage, LPDDR4X RAM, and up to a 25 MP camera sensor.

The specifications list remains unconfirmed for now. Huawei may unveil the Kirin 970 later this year while details on the Snapdragon 845 may not come until 2018.

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