Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit, scheduled to be held next month, will officially announce the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 and Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro , but before that grand unveiling, the company’s desoldered flagship SoC has already gone on sale in China. At a price of $42, we doubt many will resist the urge to grab these units, but the only hurdle is how to make these chipsets work.

Considering that the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro (designation number SM8975-100-BC) was estimated to be priced at above $300 , a Shenzhen-based seller is offering free shipping for engineering samples that were pulled from a test board and are up for grabs at a price that the majority might entertain. Since the seller has bulk stock available, he’s at liberty to price the silicon more cheaply.

In the image below, the SoC die features the marking SM8975-100-BC, indicating that this particular Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro is paired with LPDDR5X RAM rather than the faster or more efficient LPDDR6 memory. The two chipsets in the picture also feature a lot code; FC5528M5 and FX602R8T. These letters and numbers indicate the fabrication plant, assembly site, and packaging date, and, in this case, the letter “F” suggests that TSMC was the foundry.

We can also spot a heatsink solution, which is similar to Samsung’s Heat Pass Block implementation on the Exynos 2600 , which we previously reported to be more effective than liquid-nitrogen cooling . According to the report, the Exynos 2600 uses a smaller 563-ball FBGA package for LPDDR5X. On the other hand, Qualcomm’s chip has to support both LPDDR6 and LPDDR5X, which pushes it toward a larger 1,295-ball FBGA package for LPDDR6 and a 496-ball FBGA package for LPDDR5X, leaving less physical space on the package for the heat spreader.

Based on various markings, the engineering samples became available to Qualcomm’s partners on February 3, but there’s no telling whether this will be the final design. It all boils down to the findings we’ll uncover after the Snapdragon Summit, so stay tuned for more updates.

News Source: Notebookcheck

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