Qualcomm unveils Snapdragon 888 5G platform in full
5G one chip sees 20% CPU boost
Qualcomm on Wednesday unveiled its latest flagship chip-set Snapdragon 888 5G mobile platform at its annual tech summit.
The platform upped 5G, artificial intelligence (AI), camera, gaming and security features. It will roll out in new smartphones launching in the first quarter of 2021.
Snapdragon 888 integrates X60 5G modem-RF system and is offered in one chip. Snapdragon 865 was offered in two chips.
Snapdragon 888 supports 5G sub-6 carrier aggregation and mmWave and will offer speeds of 7.5Gbps, the US chip giant said. Coverage is available around world thanks to Dynamic Spectrum Sharing technology.
The chip also supports Global 5G multi-SIM. It also comes with Qualcomm FastConnect 6900 mobile connectivity system for fast Wi-Fi 6 speeds of up to 3.6Gbps.
Snapdragon 888’s CPU, Kryo 680, has eight cores. It generates up to a 25% increase in overall CPU performance and allows top frequencies of up to 2.84GHz. Power consumption is decreased by 20%.
It is also the first commercial CPU subsystem to be based on the Arm Cortex-X1, clocks in at 2.8GHz. Kryo 680 has one Arm Cortex-X1 core, three Cortex-A78 cores and four Cortex-A55 cores.
Adreno 660 GPU also offers 35% faster graphics rendering compared to its predecessors.
Snapdragon 888 is also Qualcomm’s first 5-nm chip. Samsung Electronics will be manufacturing the chips.
Snapdragon 888 also comes with Spectra 580 ISP, which has a triple image signal process for the first time. The processor can process images from three cameras at 2.7 gigapixels per second. It also allows three 4K HDR videos to be filmed at once. It also supports 120gps burst snapshots.
For gaming, the platform has variable rate shading for the first time for a mobile device that improves game rendering by up to 30%, Qualcomm said. Responsiveness has also increased by 20% that lowers touch latency for better game play.
In AI, Snapdragon 888 has the Hexagon 780 processor that has up to three times performance per watt improvement over the prior generation at 26 TOPS.