Hetergeneous Compute, Symphony System Manager & Multimedia
It's processor season folks. 10nm offerings from both Samsung and Qualcomm are finally with us. We've been waiting on them for quite a while now. Today, it's time to take a look at the Snapdragon 835. Qualcomm dropped the ball in 2015 with the Snapdragon 810. The processor's throttling problems made it one of the biggest failures in company history. It responded by launching the Snapdragon 821 and 820 with custom made Kryo cores on board. Now, 2017's Snapdragon 835 follows similar steps. Curious? Take a look below to find out more.
Processing:
To start off, let's take a look at performance details for the Snapdragon 835. This year, Qualcomm has increased the core count on its flagship processor. The Snapdragon 835 features two sets of four Kryo 280 cores each. These are clocked at 2.45GHz and 1.9*GHz for the higher and lower performance clusters. The Kryo 280 cores are different from their predecessors in more than their name. The original cores on the Snapdragon 820 were a completely custom Qualcomm solution.
This year, the Kryo cores are based on an unspecified ARM design. As you'd have guessed, the Snapdragon 835 uses Kryo 280 cores for both the performance and efficiency cluster. The main focus for the 835 is power efficiency. Qualcomm hopes that 10nm will do its work for performance and that up to 80% of the workload on the Snapdragon 835 will be performed by the 1.9GHz core cluster. At the processing end, the company promises a 20% boost over the Snapdragon 820.
Samsung's 10nm FinFET for the processor offers a lot of benefits as well. The Korean tech giant promises a 30% performance area efficiency increase, a 20% performance boost and 40% reduction in power consumption when compared to 16nm. Furthermore, Qualcomm also expects 2.5 hours of additional battery life for power users. The company's licensing agreement with ARM allows it to make changes to the latter's designs for execution pipelines, branch predictions and other details.
Finally, an interesting feature on the Snapdragon 835 is different cache sizes. The higher performance core cluster gets 2MB of L2 cache and the lower performance cluster gets 1MB of cache. Power efficiency, rather than hardcore performance is Qualcomm's concern on the Snapdragon 835. It's the correct approach as there's little that the average user can do with top tier performance specifications. Power efficiency, on the other hand, is a need that no smartphone user out there will deny having.
Graphics:
Qualcomm's GPUs for the Snapdragon lineup are industry best. They beat every other mobile offering out there in benchmark scores and ensure a strong competitive advantage for the company. The Snapdragon 835 will feature the Adreno 540, which will step things up a notch over its predecessor, the Adreno 530. The Adreno 540 will significantly improve graphics performance over its predecessor. The GPU will increase support to 107 million colors, from 17 million on the Adreno 530. It's a 64x increase, that will allow developers to include support for HDR10 and allow for crisp and detailed image/video capture.
The Adreno 540 also supports 25% increase in 3D rendering over the Adreno 530 and allows for faster trilinear filtering and GPGPU processing. For the uninitiated, this means that on the Adreno 540, you'll be able to achieve smoother texture for image, courtesy of faster linear interpolation between image mipmapping. The Adreno 540 also supports DX 12, Open GL ES 3.2, OpenCL 2.0, Vulkan and Google's Daydream for VR.
The Adreno 540 will also come with improved display rates, that will end up smoothing frame rates and overall display outputs. For the Adreno 540, display refresh rate will be equal to the GPU frame rate. Finally, when combined with the Hexagon DSP's additional HVX DSP, the Adreno 540 and the Snapdragon 835 will also include improved support for heavy image and video processing. All in all, the Adreno 540 will include significant overhauls to graphics rendering and improve output, VR applications and task allocation.
Camera:
With hardware advancement, camera and image processing capabilities have become a greater part of flagship devices. Apple introduced its custom ISP on the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus last year, and Qualcomm's made similar improvements to the Snapdragon 835 as well. The processor makes some much overdue upgrades and adds a few new features into the mix. Its Spectra ISP is a 14 bit dual SIP setup which includes support for dual 16MP or single 32MP camera setups.
However, the ISP brings a lot of new features to board as well. For starters, Qualcomm has included support for an Optical Zoom module. This, as the name suggests, includes support for 2x optical and 10x digital zoom. It uses technology similar to the iPhone 7 to achieve this effect, by bringing together a telephoto and a wide angle lens. The biggest upgrade to the Snapdragon 835's image processing capabilities is the addition of a Dual Photodiode AutoFocus module. This includes phase detection diodes for every pixel on the image sensor, rather than just 5%. Samsung implemented the feature with its Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge last year as well.
Heterogeneous Compute:
Any post on the Snapdragon processors will be incomplete without Heterogeneous computing. Qualcomm's been working on the platform for quite a while, looking to combine the various different components inside the processor to deliver increased efficiency and throughput. The Snapdragon 835 will combine its DSP, ISP, CPU, GPU and VPU to achieve this effect. Heterogeneous compute will utilize the select strengths of each component to deliver a holistically sound package.
These will add a lot to the Snapdragon 835's VR capabilities and deliver in other critical areas as well. The most important of these are machine learning, which will play a bigger part in smartphones. As a brief example, Apple's rumored to introduce facial recognition with the iPhone 8. If similar features are used in the Android world, the Heterogeneous compute will play a huge role. For facial recognition, the lesser power intensive camera sensor will capture details, which will then be processed jointly by the ISP and CPU. This will, in turn, perform complex operations while remaining in the required thermal/power budget for a smartphone.
An important feature for the Snapdragon 835 is the Symphony System Manager. This works in a similar principle to heterogeneous compute but only for the CPU. With SSM, developers will be able to choose which ones they want to assign specific tasks to. Continuing with our facial recognition example, imagine an app that allows you to sign in Facebook with your face, regardless of the device under use. Now, tasks such as displaying text on the screen, user instruction and more will be delegated to the 1.9GHz Kryo 280 cores.
Intensive tasks such as the actual recognition and interlinking this with user identity and Facebook account details will be delegated to the higher frequency Kryo cores. Developer access to SSM will provide them with greater control over the effect of app usage on battery life. The Snapdragon 835 will also include support for TensorFlow and Caffe's neural network framework. These open new avenues for computational spread across the DSP, GPU and CPU; which is the essence of Heterogeneous compute.
Multimedia, Connectivity, Miscellaneous & Conclusion:
The Snapdragon 835 will feature improvement in its audio capabilities as well. Qualcomm will improve its Acqstic audio code to include support for 32bit/384KHz audio files. To add the proverbial cherry on top, the code will also include support for an SNR at 115dB and -105dB THD+N. The processor will also retain support for aptX and aptxHD, allowing for wireless playback. An 802.11 ac modem will be directly integrated on the Snapdragon 835's motherboard and the processor will support WiFi 802.11 ad. Qualcomm's latest X16 LTE modem will also make it on the processor and include support for up to 1Gbps download speeds.
Quick Charge 4.0 for the Snapdragon 835 will ensure 5 hours of battery life from just a 5 minute charge. That's absolutely amazing if you ask us. To make matters better, QC 4.0 will include support for a large variety of operational modes and will include greater accessory support. This includes catering to Type-C standards, which have finally permeated the market. Finally, the latest Quick Charge from Qualcomm includes a cable quality detector that will supply current only to functional accessories, which make the cut.
To conclude, it's a great year for mobile. 10nm will make it on flagship devices and a more holistic approach to processing will be its counterpart. The Snapdragon 835 will increase core count, improve graphics and take image processing to the next level. It will then combine these to make sure that tasks are carried out in the most efficient manner. The processor will soon make it to the market on the Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus. We'll be ready with some benchmarks when it does.
Till then, let us know what you think in the comments section below and stay tuned. We'll keep you updated on the latest.
Contents
About the author: Ramish is a seasoned technology writer and editor with more than a decade of experience. He specializes in semiconductor fabrication and market analysis. With a background in finance and supply chain management - via his bachelors in Finance and a micromasters in supply chain management from MIT - Ramish combines financial rigor with deep industry insight to deliver accurate and authoritative coverage.
Follow Wccftech on Google to get more of our news coverage in your feeds.
