It was recently reported that Qualcomm is cooperating with Changxin Memory to develop customized mobile DRAM solutions for smartphones.Tianfeng International analyst Ming-Chi Kuo disclosed some details: Qualcomm is working with GigaDevice to develop an independent NPU for smartphones, equipped with Changxin 4GB customized 3D DRAM.
It is expected to be shipped in large quantities at the end of 2026 or early 2027. The target customers are Chinese mobile phone brands, targeting models above 4,000-4,500 yuan.
The AI computing power of this independent NPU is about 40 TOPS. The 3D DRAM manufactured by Changxin uses TSV and Hybrid Bonding stacking technology, and the memory bandwidth is higher than the current LPDDR5X standard.
The advantage of an independent NPU is that it can continuously run long-term AI tasks with stable computing power, such as real-time video translation, background image generation, etc., which is equivalent to doubling the AI computing power of flagship mobile phones.
Currently, the NPU in a mobile phone SoC shares the power budget with the CPU and GPU, and its computing power is strictly limited. The independent NPU solution can theoretically break through this bottleneck by separating AI calculations from the SoC and providing higher bandwidth with dedicated 3D DRAM.
However, Ming-Chi Kuo also pointed out that the project’s shipment outlook and number of cases opened were lower than expected in the first half of 2025.There are two main reasons. First, the continued rise in memory prices has pushed up the cost of NPU. Second, the device-side AI application and business model are still unclear.
