The year 2016 seems full of promising smart devices that house impressive chipsets, including Samsung's Exynos 8890 and Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820, which are both reported to power the upcoming Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge in February. Now, LG joins the fray, making its own processor called the NUCLUN 2.
So far, not much is known about LG's processor, but recent developments suggest that Intel and TSMC, a Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturing company, have both started trial production for the NUCLUN 2 using different methods. TSMC will build the LG's processor on its 16nm node, whereas Intel will build it on its 14nm node.
According to leaks, it'll sport eight cores with ARM's Cortex A53 and Cortex A72 cores with a big.LITTLE configuration. Seeing as the South Korean firm has set its eyes on Intel's XMM 7360 modem for a while now, the chipset will likely support LTE Cat. 10 with 450 Mbps along with tri-carrier integration.
LG has reportedly acquired the results of the two NUCLUN 2 samples from Intel and TSMC, where the United States-based chipmaker scored a higher frequency with 2.4 GHz against the Taiwan chipmaker's 2.1 GHz.
But what happened to the first NUCLUN? Well, it didn't get off the ground, as the first generation was manufactured with Cortex A15 cores at the same time when the Cortex A53 and Cortex A72 cores were rolling out.
As a result, the original NUCLUN just wasn't able to keep up. The Cortex A15 core is on ARMv7 architectures and both the Cortex A53 and Cortex A72 cores are on the ARMv8 architecture, which performs better and is more ready for the future.
Intel seems to be consistently bringing better results to the table, which means that a partnership with LG might be inked soon. However, until we hear an official announcement from the two, it'd probably be a good to hold off from drawing conclusions.
