Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon 888 revealing its potential and improvements over its predecessors. The exact details of actual core-configurations and other technical terms have now been shared by Qualcomm, of the upcoming Snapdragon 888. The new 5G based AI-powered chipset is not just 35% faster than all existing Qualcomm processors but is also capable of world-class Image Processing with the new Qualcomm Spectra 580 ISP on the Snapdragon 888.
Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 – Specifications and Details
The Snapdragon 888 system-on-chip is an octa-core processor that uses a very unconventional core configuration of 1-3-4. It consists of one Cortex-X1 core clocked at 2.84GHz, three Kryo 680 cores based on Cortex-A78 clocked at 2.42GHz, and four Cortex A-55 cores clocked at 1.8GHz. It is coupled with Adreno 660 GPU with support for OpenGL ES 3.2, OpenCL 2.0 FP, and Vulkan 1.1 for graphic rendering. The chipset is fabricated on Samsung’s 5nm architecture.
The 6th gen Qualcomm AI Engine is capable of 26TOPS (Trillion Operations Per Second) which makes the AI performance of this chipset second to none, in the Android segment. The Hexagon 780 DSP will also help accelerate the performance of virtual assistants like Google Assistant, Alexa, and others on your device, with support for large-shared AI memory.
The Snapdragon 888, being the latest 5G chipset by Qualcomm features the Qualcomm X60 5G modem, based on RF-System. The modem supports all existing 5G standards like 5G mmWave of 800MHz, the sub-6GHz band with 200MHz, 5G carrier aggregation, multiple 5G sims, and more. The modem has peak download speeds of 7.5Gbps and upload speeds of over 3Gbps. Qualcomm has implemented many power-saving features like Qualcomm 5G PowerSave to manage power consumption efficiently.
The new chipset also comes with support for WiFi 6, meaning the Snapdragon 888 will support 3 WiFi bands – 2.4GHz, 5GHz, and 6GHz. It also comes with 8-channel MU-MIMO for better communication between WiFi modems and the chipset. Bluetooth also gets an upgrade here with Bluetooth 5.2 and dual antennas. It retains Qualcomm aptX HD audio with support for Low-Energy Audio for wireless acoustics. Qualcomm says the dual-antennas should enhance wireless audio transmission by a good margin.
Qualcomm has integrated the new Spectra 580 ISP on the Snapdragon 888, which can process 2.7gigapixels per second. This ISP comes with several hardware accelerations for Computer Vision (CV-ISP) and Triple 14-bit image signal processing. The Spectra 580 can work on 120 individual images of 12MP each, in a second. It supports dual cameras up to 64MP, triple rear cameras up to 28MP, and a single rear camera of 200MP with Multi-Frame Noise Reduction (MFNR) for better image quality in low-light.
Videos can now be shot in HEVC, HDR10, HDR10+ along with Dolby Vision on the Snapdragon 888. It can also capture slow-motion videos in 960fps at 720p. The new ISP can also record videos in 8K 30fps, which the first for any mobile processor. Videos can also be captured at 10-bit color depth.
The Snapdragon 888 has the capability to drive 4K displays at 60Hz, and QHD+ displays at 144Hz. The chipset comes with various supported playback codecs like H.265, HEVC, HLG, HDR10, VP8, VP9, and more. Videos can be directly processed in Dolby Vision at 10bit-color depth. The GPU now does Demura and subpixel rendering for OLED uniformity.
Qualcomm has included a Secure Processing Unit on this chipset. This unit can process biometric authentication faster, making faster checks and unlocks. The SPU works with fingerprints, face recognition, voice, and iris scanning.
The new Snapdragon 888 is effectively 35% faster than all mobile processors, in all aspects like performance, connectivity, and enhancements. May companies are looking forward to featuring this chipset in their smartphones. Companies like Xiaomi have already announced devices that will feature the Snapdragon 888. It will be very interesting to see how this chipset performs on end devices.
