Qualcomm & Samsung – Hot silicon

Overheating very unlikely to be a Qualcomm design flaw.

• There is enough noise in the market to make it likely that there has been a problem of some description with the Snapdragon 810 in the early version of the Samsung Galaxy S6.
• These problems seem to have been bad enough for Samsung to consider dropping the Qualcomm processor from its flagship device which is due to launch right before Mobile World Congress in early March.
• Under normal circumstances, Samsung has been using its in-house applications processor, Exynos, where it can and Qualcomm where it can’t.
• Historically, this has meant that Exynos is used where performance is not critical and LTE is not used and Qualcomm where they are.
• I am pretty sure that if the Exynos chipset family performed as well as its Qualcomm equivalent, Samsung would use it in all of its devices.
• However, Qualcomm is the technology leader in this space and so far, the performance of its chips has tended to be significantly better than any in house equivalents.
• This is not the first time that there has been a reported fault with a Qualcomm chipset, but it is the first time that the reported fault has been limited to just one handset maker.
• LG is using the Snapdragon 810 in the LG Flex 2 and has reported no such problems.
• The device is also in the Xiaomi Mi Note Pro Phablet and again there has been no sign of overheating.
• Consequently, I suspect that there is something specific in the way that Samsung has implemented the Android software that is causing the chip to overheat.
• This is not a design fault on the part of Qualcomm, but merely an incompatibility between the chip design and the way that Samsung has chosen to implement the Galaxy S6.
• This will mean that Qualcomm will need to make some adjustments to its driver software to fix the problem which is something that should be accomplished reasonably quickly.
• I do not expect Qualcomm to have to redesign the silicon which is a time consuming and very expensive process.
• The net result is likely to be that Qualcomm remains a major supplier to the Galaxy S6 as Samsung badly needs this device to be a hit in order to regain some of the ground that it lost in 2014.
• Running the device with just the Exynos processor runs the risk of the device underperforming its rivals and struggling with the integration of the processor with the LTE modem.
• This is something that Samsung cannot afford and consequently I don’t think that Qualcomm is about to lose the socket in this very important handset program.
• Either way this event is a PR boon for MediaTek which is quickly coming up the learning curve and eager to grab share at the higher end of the market.