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Qualcomm Exec Denies Any Problems With Snapdragon 810

In an interview with Re/code, the chipmaker insists the chip is "performing very well" despite being left out of a key upcoming phone.

Qualcomm

Qualcomm says that its Snapdragon 810 is just fine, thank you.

“We don’t see any problem with the 810,” Qualcomm Executive VP Cristiano Amon told Re/code. While Amon wouldn’t comment on every rumored issue, he said that the chip is performing exactly as the company expected it to. “I think there is a lot of misinformation out there.”

He also added that the company isn’t making any special versions of the 810, as had been rumored, and that the existing chip is “performing very well.”

Qualcomm confirmed on Wednesday that a major customer, widely assumed to be Samsung, wouldn’t be using the chip in an upcoming flagship device. Amon said that it would be widely adopted in a range of flagship phones this year, and Qualcomm indicated yesterday that, in all, the chip has been designed into more than 60 products.

“We lost one design,” Amon said. “We wish we had not lost that design.”

The Qualcomm 810 is the first of the company’s high-end processors to use a 64-bit core. In order to get to market more quickly with such a core, Qualcomm used a design directly licensed from ARM, rather than designing its own ARM-based core as it usually does.

Qualcomm confirmed Wednesday that the company’s next high-end chip, the Snapdragon 820 that will sample later this year, will use a Qualcomm-based core and be built on a next-generation manufacturing process. Using thinner wiring typically allows chips to produce less heat at a given speed.

Samsung has a manufacturing edge right now, with it’s internal chipmaking operations ahead of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., which makes chips for Qualcomm and others. Samsung is already getting chips that use 14-nanometer wiring, compared to 20 nanometers for Qualcomm and others. Smaller wiring also means smaller chips and, assuming Samsung is getting good yields from its plants, also cheaper chips.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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