Qualcomm recently announced the successor to the Snapdragon 845 which has been powering the 2018 flagships. The Snapdragon 855 is intended for flagships of 2019 and now we will take a look at what the newest flagship from Qualcomm has to offer.
Firstly speaking of its architecture , the SoC comes with KRYO 485 CPU and is based on the 7nm FinFET process. It consists of 8 cores with 4 high performance cores (CORTEX A76) and remaining 4 low performance cores (CORTEX A55). Out of the 4 high performance cores 1 core has a much higher clock speed of 2.84 GHz and the remaining 3 are clocked at 2.42 GHz. The low performance Cortex A55 cores are clocked at 1.8 GHz. The GPU is the Adreno 640. The DSP is the Hexagon 690 and Qualcomm claims 2x Vector accelerator increase which helps in the image processing. The KRYO 485 is expected to have a performance improvement of about 45% than the predecessor.
One of the primary reason for such a jump in performance is related to the 3 core configuration. Unlike the predecessors that came with the big.LITTLE configuration of 4 high and 4 low power cores this time the 1+3+4 configuration leads to better performance due to the shared cluster design. The GPU is expected to give a performance increase of about 20% than the predecessor. It supports Vulkan 1.1 API and can also handle 4K HDR gaming with 8K 360 VR video playback.
It's the end of 2018 and AI tasks rendering has become the need of the hour and Qualcomm isn't any exception in this field. The Vector Accelerator improvement along with the TENSOR accelerator and the Hexagon 690 DSP collectively form the 4th gen of AI by Qualcomm. The AI improvements will be observed in tasks such as gaming, while using the camera, XR and personal assistants. The improvements in algorithms will enable all the cores to function effectively, collectively making more than 7 trillion operations per second.
A tensor processing unit (TPU) is an AI accelerator application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) developed by Google specifically for neural network machine learning. Quoted from Wikipedia
Speaking of camera, the Snapdragon 855 SoC comes with the 14 bit dual Qualcomm's Spectra 380 ISP i.e image signal processor. It can support 20 MP dual camera or a single lens upto 32MP. 4K recording is supported with HDR and slow motion at 720p HDR with 480 FPS. The video capture formats include HDR10+, HDR10 and HLG. This along with AI related features will enable an immersive experience in terms of image processing although it completely depends on the manufacturer to make full use of it since its not always the hardware but software that can do wonders e.g Google's Pixel lineup.
Speaking of display resolution the maximum supported resolution is 4K HDR with 10 bit color depth and REC. 2020 Color gamut. The SoC can support upto 2 4K HDR displays if connected externally.
Coming to connectivity :
5G Modem :
The Snapdragon 855 is the first SoC to support 5G when available readily. It consists of the X50 5G modem to make full use of it although it may not be available in all devices.
The supported spectrum are :
a) mmWave : 800MHz bandwidth, 2X2 MIMO
b) Sub-6 GHz : 100 MHz bandwidth, 4X4 MIMO
The mmWave ranges from 30GHz to 300 GHz although the Sub-6 GHz is expected to be widely used for 5G networks however it depends on the carrier in various regions.
4G modem :
The modem for 4G which is an established network unlike 5G is the X24 LTE.
Downlink: LTE Cat 20 up to 2.0 Gbps, 7x20
MHz carrier aggregation, 4x4 MIMO
on five carriers
The modem for 4G which is an established network unlike 5G is the X24 LTE.
Downlink: LTE Cat 20 up to 2.0 Gbps, 7x20
MHz carrier aggregation, 4x4 MIMO
on five carriers
Uplink: LTE Cat 13 up to 318 Mbps, 3x20 MHz
carrier aggregation and Uplink data compression.
carrier aggregation and Uplink data compression.
WiFi module :
Standards : 802.11ax-ready, 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac
2.4 and 5GHz band support. In 60 GHz platform, the standards are 802.11 ad and ay with peak speeds upto 10 Gbps.
Standards : 802.11ax-ready, 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac
2.4 and 5GHz band support. In 60 GHz platform, the standards are 802.11 ad and ay with peak speeds upto 10 Gbps.
The 802.11 ax is the newer addition to the IEEE WiFi standards and is also known as WiFi 6. It makes use if MIMO and MU-MIMO along with OFDMA.
Memory :
The Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 SoC supports upto 16GB of LPDDR4X RAM with 4x16 bit channels and speeds upto 2133 MHz.
The Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 SoC supports upto 16GB of LPDDR4X RAM with 4x16 bit channels and speeds upto 2133 MHz.
Bluetooth and miscellaneous :
The SoC comes with support for Bluetooth 5.0 with speed upto 2Mbps and Satellite Systems Support consists of Dual frequency GNSS, GPS, GLONASS, Beidou, Galileo, QZSS and SBAS. It comes with USB version 3.1 with Type C support. The SoC supports Qualcomm's quick charge 4.0 + although its upto the manufacturer depending upon their implementation.
The SoC comes with support for Bluetooth 5.0 with speed upto 2Mbps and Satellite Systems Support consists of Dual frequency GNSS, GPS, GLONASS, Beidou, Galileo, QZSS and SBAS. It comes with USB version 3.1 with Type C support. The SoC supports Qualcomm's quick charge 4.0 + although its upto the manufacturer depending upon their implementation.
From these specifications it is evident that the newest flagship from Qualcomm is focussed on performance improvements hovering around AI with being 5G ready. The direct competitor to the 855 is Huawei's Hisilicon Kirin 980 SoC and Samsung's Exynos 9820 which should be powering the next Galaxy flagship i.e the Samsung S10 (Non-US version).
The CPU and GPU comparison is tabulated below :
| SOC | Sd 855 | Kirin 980 | Exynos 9820 |
|---|---|---|---|
| CPU | 1 Cortex A76 - 2.84GHz 3 Cortex A76 - 2.42Ghz 4 Cortex A55 - 1.8GHz | 2 Cortex A76 - 2.6GHz 2 Cortex A76 - 1.96Ghz 4 Cortex A55 - 1.8GHz |
2 Exynos M4 2 Cortex A75 4 Cortex A55 |
| GPU | Adreno 640 | Mali G76-MP10 | Mali G76-MP12 |
| Process | 7nm FinFET | 7nm | 8nm FinFET |
FlexPai foldable device
The SoC will debut in early 2019 with the mainstream companies however we already have a foldable phone having the Snapdragon 855 which is a Chinese based company FlexPai. The details mentioned pertaining to the Quick charging version, camera implementation, availability of 5G modem may vary based on the manufacturers requirements. We at present cannot compare the competitors side by side however in 2019 we should get an idea as to which SoC among them has been tuned to perfection. We do not consider the Apple's A series here since they are always miles ahead especially considering their latest A12X Bionic in the iPad and when will Qualcomm reach that level - well only time can tell !
Image source : FlexPai ; Qualcomm