With smartphone chipsets reaching higher performance levels, thermal management is increasingly a constraint. Reports from supply-chain sources and Chinese social media tipsters indicate Qualcomm could adopt Samsung’s Heat Pass Block (HPB) cooling system in the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 to mitigate growing heat issues.
The development follows Qualcomm’s growing focus on benchmark dominance, which has increased thermal strain on its chips. Its previous flagship, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, surpassed Apple’s A19 Pro in Geekbench 6 multi-core scores but consumed roughly 61% more power, underscoring performance gains achieved at the cost of efficiency.
According to Weibo tipsters, Qualcomm has reportedly pushed the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro close to 5 GHz on its performance cores during internal testing. That kind of speed might work in a lab, but keeping it cool inside a phone is a much tougher problem.
Samsung’s Heat Pass Block debuted in the 2nm Exynos 2600, where it reportedly cut thermal resistance by 16%. The approach uses a copper-based layer bonded directly to the die, allowing heat to be drawn away before it spreads to nearby components.
One of the main architectural changes tied to HPB is moving the DRAM module from its usual stacked position above the SoC to a neighboring location. This shift helps reduce heat buildup and allows copper’s high thermal conductivity to work more effectively.
Conventional smartphone cooling methods, such as vapor chambers and graphite layers, are delivering smaller gains as chip power density continues to rise. Even a move to TSMC’s more efficient 2nm process is unlikely to fully counter the added thermal load when clock speeds are pushed for peak performance.
As a result, direct-source cooling solutions like HPB are increasingly viewed not as experimental features but as necessary architectural improvements for continued mobile performance scaling.
If Qualcomm brings the Heat Pass Block to its Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 lineup, it would mark the company’s first shift toward managing heat directly at the die level. The change would also suggest that conventional cooling approaches are no longer sufficient for today’s smartphone designs.
Although Qualcomm has not officially confirmed the information, consistent reporting from reliable leak sources, including those with a proven record on Exynos 2600, suggests the technology is being actively evaluated internally. Reports say HPB is one of several approaches under consideration for stabilizing thermals during peak usage.
As thermal constraints continue to limit raw performance improvements, advanced cooling technologies may become a primary point of differentiation for flagship mobile processors.
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