Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 mobile processors are so popular inside 4G LTE-based devices that the company has been forced to find a partner for manufacturing purposes. Qualcomm announced on Wednesday that it has partnered with Samsung to produce additional supply.
Qualcomm currently contracts Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC) to build the company’s latest 28nm design for its Snapdragon S4 processor. As mobile sales have picked up TSMC has been unable to meet demand which led Qualcomm to Samsung.
While Samsung makes its own quad-core Exynos-branded processors and ships the international version of its Samsung Galaxy S III smartphone with that processor, the company will rely on the 4G LTE compatibility of Qualcomm’s S4 chipset for U.S. smartphones.
The Qualcomm processor is so popular that the company has also signed a deal with UMC to further its supply needs. Among some of Qualcomm’s top processor-based devices are the HTC One XL and HTC One S.
Much like Samsung HTC uses a quad-core processor for non-LTE version of the One X but relies on the S4 processor for LTE features.
According to Electronista :
“The S4 is a unique Qualcomm design based on its ‘Krait’ architecture. It is said that this S4 design is very similar to ARM’s own next-generation Cortex A-15 mobile architecture. It has been shown to outperform Cortex A-9 processors like Samsung’s Exynos 4-series and NVIDIA’s Tegra 3 in a number of benchmarks, although not in graphics performance.”
Do you think the Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 is a better processor than the ARM Cortex A-15 mobile architecture.
