Samsung proceeds with development of second-gen 10nm chips ahead of Galaxy S9 smartphone release

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Samsung is reportedly developing its second-generation 10-nanometer chips for the company's upcoming mobile devices. The South Korean tech firm appears to be serious in securing the top spot in the smartphone race, ensuring that its latest batch of mobile processors will outclass the ones in the current flagship handsets. One of the new Samsung devices expected to receive the new 10nm chip is the Galaxy S9 smartphone.

As reported by Engadget, the second-gen 10nm chips is now being called the 10-nanometer LPP. This new technology is said to be used in Qualcomm's next top-tier chipset, which is believed to be the Snapdragon 845. As for Samsung's very own creations, the 10nm LPP will be first featured in the Galaxy S9 and S9+ flagships coming up next year.

The catch in this second-gen 10nm Samsung chips is that it can provide 10 percent better performance than the current 10nm LPE processors, as well as lowering the power consumption of the chip by 15 percent. Still, the process in manufacturing the new 10nm LPP chips is the same as the one used for the LPE chipsets. Even if the second-gen LPP processor will be more powerful, only a slight delay is expected during the production stage. In fact, according to ZDNet, Samsung's turnaround time or the period of development to production is shorter for the 10nm LPP than the 10nm LPE.

Meanwhile, Samsung has also been working on the smaller 8-nanometer process for a mobile chip. Just like the other procedures, the 8nm chips are manufactured the same way as the larger 10nm mobile processors. The tech giant is also eyeing to develop a 7-nanometer process for their future mobile chips, but more work has to be done for the current 10-namometer and 8-nanometer variants.

With only a short time expected for the development of the second-gen 10nm LPP chips, the timing could just be right before the unveiling of the new Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+ smartphones in early 2018. According to BGR, the next flagships are likely to be announced a bit earlier than usual, possibly in January.