Qualcomm presents 64-bit octacore for expensive smartphones
Qualcomm has presented two new socs for high-end smartphones. The Snapdragon 810 has eight processor cores based on a 64-bit architecture. With that, Qualcomm is dropping its own Krait core for new processors in favor of ARM’s micro-architectures.
The Snapdragon 810 has four Cortex A57 processor cores and four Cortex A53 cores, all eight made at 20nm. The Cortex A53 and A57 are the first microarchitectures based on the ARMv8a instruction set with 64bit support that Qualcomm uses. With the announcement of the Snapdragon 810 and the previously presented 610, 615 and 410, it is clear that none of Qualcomm’s new socs runs on its own Krait core. Qualcomm has been using its own core for its processors since early 2009.
The Snapdragon 810 has an Adreno 430 GPU and support for lpddr4 memory. The soc supports uhd displays and can therefore also be used for a next generation of tablets with resolutions higher than the current maximum of 2560×1600 pixels. The Snapdragon 810 should appear in smartphones and tablets in the first half of 2015, and as it seems now, that soc is in time for the successors of, for example, the Samsung Galaxy S5 and HTC One (M8).
In addition, Qualcomm comes with the Snapdragon 808, a hexacore soc with two Cortex A57 cores and four cores on the Cortex A53 core. The GPU in it is the Adreno 418, which should be forty percent faster than the Adreno 330 from current socs. Both socs support the faster version of 4g, lte-advanced.
Qualcomm currently supplies the socs for almost all high-end smartphones with Android and Windows Phone. The chipmaker previously presented the Snapdragon 610 and Snapdragon 410. Samsung, Sony, HTC, Nokia, BlackBerry, LG and Google, among others, use Qualcomm’s socs.
| cores | 4x Cortex A57+ 4x Cortex A53 |
2x Cortex A57+ 4x Cortex A53 |
4x Krait 400 | 4x Krait 400 |
| Speed | Unknown | Unknown | Max 2.5GHz | Max 2.3GHz |
| instruction set | ARMv8-A | ARMv8-A | ARMv7-A | ARMv7-A |
| GPU | Adreno 430 | Adreno 418 | Adreno 330 | Adreno 330 |
| Memory | LPDDR4-1600 | LPDDR4-900 | LPDDDR3-933 | LPDDR3-800 |
| Particularities | Dual ISP, HEVC decode/encode | Dual ISP, HEVC decode | dual sim | SensorCore |
| Release | First half 2015 | First half 2015 | Q1 2014 | Q3 2013 |