Qualcomm introduced Snapdragon 855 - chip flagship 2019

The second day of the summit manufacturer Qualcomm has officially announced the release of a mobile platform Snapdragon 855. The chip has become the most high-performance on the market for flagship devices. Platform received eight-processor, which consists of three clusters 485 Kryo cores: one consists of a core 2 with a frequency 84 GHz, the other - of the three cores 2 of frequency, 42 GHz, and the third includes four cores at 1, 8 GHz.

An integral part of the new platform has also become a graphics Adreno 640, Hexagon signal processor 690, as well as Spectra 380 - a separate processor, which is responsible for processing the image. As expected, the new modem Snapdragon the X50 with 5G support is a separate chip: so that the platform itself Snapdragon 855 supports only LTE network with data rates up to 2 Gbit / s, because it is part of a modem Snapdragon X24. Why was this done? So even the manufacturers of inexpensive smartphones will be able to use the latest mobile platform, Qualcomm, refused to support the 5G, but at the same time retaining all the advantages of the S855.

As for performance, Qualcomm announced that it has increased by 45% compared to the Snapdragon 845. The performance of the GPU at the same time increased by 20%. 7-nm process technology has allowed to create the most productive chip, if we take as a comparison of power-per-watt.

the Adreno 640 the GPU

Adreno 640 graphics clearly in the spotlight for the use of the platform in order to play. Qualcomm recounted that the segment of mobile games is growing, and other platforms for video games at the same time either "stagnating" or showing a decrease in popularity. In addition to increasing productivity, Qualcomm said a lot about the graphics capabilities of the platform. Adreno 640 graphics S855 will run on real HDR-games. The processor supports 10-bit color depth and range of Rec 2020 to use HDR, and will allow devices on the basis of S855 support formats HDR10 + and Dolby Vision, which are the QC standards worldwide. With Adreno device 640 can support 120fps-game as well as play video without jerks at 8K (360 degrees) format.

It is noteworthy that the Snapdragon 855 is the first platform of the company, which is included in the game program Snapdragon Elite Gaming Experience. Here, color correction and at the movies, support for API Vulkan 1.1, as well as specific algorithms to reduce the frame rate.

Hexagon 690

Despite the fact that in the new platform is no dedicated unit NPU, it can still work with the objectives for artificial intelligence. These tasks are handled as a GPU, and CPU Hexagon, and other components. All together, this represents the fourth generation of the engine AI Engine, which is three times more performance than the Snapdragon 845.

the Spectra 380

Together with the AI Engine Qualcomm also unveiled an updated signal processor Spectra 380. He became more powerful with the help of trinuclear ISP Computer Vision (CV). With the new accelerator Qualcomm wants to use the CV-ISP for some image problems due to energy savings. The company expects that many of the functions in the field of photo will now be available for video: 4K HDR recording at 60 the FPS, improving the portrait mode and the "depth" for the bokeh effect. Power consumption for the 4K HDR shooting will be 30% lower than the Snapdragon 845. It is also not without its support the new generation of image files. Currently, JPEG is the basic format of pictures taken on a smartphone, but the new S855 will maintain the "high performance image files" or a simple HEIF, which will offer a large number of new features compared to JPEG:

image size will be 50% less than
the HDR Support for multiple color tool
Data Support Computer Vision
Work with the RAW
Animated Pictures
Video data in the HEVC format

Network

In addition to supporting 5G, the platform will be able to work with Wi-Fi, in accordance with standard 802.11ay. This will increase the data rate through a wireless connection to 10 Gbit / s.

Other innovations

Support codec Qualcomm aptX Adaptive and Qualcomm TrueWireless Stereo Plus
The ability to work with ultrasonic fingerprint scanner Qualcomm 3D Sonic Sensor
Bluetooth 5.0 Support
OpenGL ES 3.2 and OpenCL 2.0 FP
Quick Charge 4+
You can use operational LPDDR4X memory frequency of 2133 MHz,

Obviously, Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 platform will find favor with many flagship 2019. An interest already expressed Google, Samsung and OnePlus, and then the others will catch up. The main thing - without the use of 5G new chip will be available for smartphone manufacturers an average price segment.