It all began with a post that cropped up on the Chinese social media site Weibo that reads "Qualcomm CEO confirmed, 10nm Snapdragon 830 has been taped, available early next year." Although everyone in the audience is aware of the fact that this is not an official statement, the rumors continue to flare up.

As Phone Arena recalls, the Snapdragon 820 was shipped along with smartphones that were launched in March this year. Logically speaking, a cursory 12-month gap is to be expected between two successive launches, meaning that the new system-on-a-chip will only be launched in March next year, or later.

As for the architecture that the Snapdragon 830 is believed to feature, the 10nm process is the most validated conjecture. The earlier adaptations of superchips including the Snapdragon 820 and Samsung's Exynos 8890 are all built using the 14nm process. This terminology basically means that the components in the chip, such as the capacitors, resistors, and the transistors, are spaced 14 nanometers apart.

Reducing this distance to 10 nanometers poses two great advantages. Firstly, stacking them closer together makes room for other components, or at the least, allows for a smaller and more compact chip design. Secondly, bringing the components closer together reduces the capacitance between the transistors. This has a dual favorable effect of decreasing the power consumed and enabling an increased processing speed.

According to Techno Buffalo, rumor has it that Qualcomm's direct competitors, such as Intel and MediaTek are both going the 10nm way. The Helio X30 from MediaTek is believed to be a deca-core chipset that is being built on a 10nm process. If this is true, then Qualcomm is likely to be not far behind, considering that they have the Snapdragon 810 overheating fiasco to make up for. Anyhow, until the superchip manufacturer comes out with an official statement, all we can do is speculate, and speculate more.