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Qualcomm Unveils Snapdragon 820 With Adreno 530 Graphics For Mobile Devices (hothardware.com)

MojoKid writes: Qualcomm held an event in New York City today to demonstrate for the first time its highly anticipated Snapdragon 820 System-on-Chip (SoC). More than just a speed bump and refresh of the Snapdragon 810, Qualcomm says it designed the Snapdragon 820 "from the ground up to be unlike anything else." Behind that marketing spin is indeed an SoC with a custom 64-bit quad-core Kyro processor clocked at up to 2.2GHz. Qualcomm says it delivers up to twice the performance and twice the power efficiency of its predecessor, which is in fact an 8-core chip. Qualcomm officials have quoted 2x the performance of their previous gen Snapdragon 810 in single threaded throughput alone, which is a sizable gain. Efficiency is also being touted here, and according to Qualcomm, the improvements it made to the underlying architecture translate into nearly a third (30 percent) less power consumption. That should help the Snapdragon 820 steer clear of overheating concerns, which is something the 810 wasn't able to do.

34 comments

  1. Anyone else by Hognoxious · · Score: 3, Funny

    Anyone else remember when Qualcomm used to make lawnmowers?

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    1. Re:Anyone else by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, I don't.

      But please get the hell off my non Qualcomm mowed lawn.

      Something something Eudora.

    2. Re:Anyone else by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You must be drunk - there was the Qualcast lawnmower.

    3. Re:Anyone else by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, it's this new invention called "a joke".

    4. Re:Anyone else by eclectro · · Score: 1

      Anyone else remember when Qualcomm used to make lawnmowers?

      I certainly do. Their 810 processor runs so hot that it's clear to me it runs on gasoline.

      --
      Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
    5. Re:Anyone else by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      Ah. Was that before they merged to form Comcast?

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  2. Re:Fast, faster, fastest by TFlan91 · · Score: 1

    My OnePlusOne loads within 15 seconds. I think that's more than reasonable for all that it is loading/doing.

  3. I'm rather excited by alvinrod · · Score: 1
    I'm rather excited about this as Qualcomm's Krait-based SoCs were a cut above the rest of the options available for Android devices at the time and only when Qualcomm used the stock ARM design and big.LITTLE configuration did their performance degrade. AnandTech had a recent review that mentioned this problem specifically:

    The key points to get from the graphs above are that for some reason the Snapdragon 800 SoC in the Nexus 5 only ends up using 3 of its 4 cores most of the time, with the frequency on the other three Krait 400 cores oscillating between 1GHz and 1.6GHz. The Snapdragon 805 in the Nexus 6 keeps all four cores at their max frequency for about twelve minutes before they all throttle down to 2GHz and remain there for nearly two hours. Meanwhile, Snapdragon 808 can only keep its two A57 cores at their peak frequency for two minutes before throttling both down to 633MHz and putting the A53s up to their peak 1.44GHz. After twelve minutes the A57s are just shut off entirely, and you're left with a cluster of 4 A53 cores at 1.44GHz. I didn't bother running this test as long as I did for Snapdragon 800 and 805 because the events at the two and twelve minute marks tell you everything you need to know.

    Part of the blame is probably the 20 nm TSMC node that apparently had problems with leakage at higher voltages, but that's unlikely to be the only issue.

  4. Re:Fast, faster, fastest by locopuyo · · Score: 1

    I have an encrypted LG G3 and it takes almost 30 seconds to get to the encryption password screen. Then just over a minute to load after entering in my encryption password.

    The leading time needs improvement.

  5. Who is their market, currently? by unixisc · · Score: 0

    As we know, Apple uses its own A-series in the iPhones, iPads and iPods. What does Samsung use? That leaves Microsoft, which is one company that uses Qualcomm's processors. Anyone know what the Lumia 950 uses?

    1. Re:Who is their market, currently? by viperidaenz · · Score: 4, Informative

      My Moto X has a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor.
      The LG Nexus 5X does too.
      OnePlus One
      A whole bunch of Samsung phones too

      Actually, the majority of the Android phones currently available.

    2. Re:Who is their market, currently? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Their market is pretty much everyone else than apple. Even then they have the baseband chip (which will probably goto intel soon enough).

    3. Re:Who is their market, currently? by tlhIngan · · Score: 2

      As we know, Apple uses its own A-series in the iPhones, iPads and iPods. What does Samsung use? That leaves Microsoft, which is one company that uses Qualcomm's processors. Anyone know what the Lumia 950 uses?

      Apple has their own processors.
      Samsung has their own processors

      Everyone else has to use Qualcomm if you want a high end processor, else a MediaTek or RockChip if you want a mid-range processor.

    4. Re:Who is their market, currently? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Most US versions of Samsung phones have Qualcomm processors. There are more snapdragons for mobile processors than probably any other manufacturer.

    5. Re:Who is their market, currently? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The Lumia 950 uses a Snapdragon 808. The Lumia 950 XL uses a Snapdragon 810.

    6. Re:Who is their market, currently? by ameoba-light · · Score: 1

      All of these are dominating the Android market due to trends of ownership.

  6. What is the current bottleneck in mobile? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    With these kinds of releases coming from hardware companies, what is the current bottleneck on mobile devices? Is it the actual wireless signal?

    In my day from what I remember while building computers, first it was Ram, then everyone focused on the Front side bus, then hard drive connection, then graphic cards, I don't know where the heck it went from there. I gave up that endless rat race.

    1. Re:What is the current bottleneck in mobile? by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      With these kinds of releases coming from hardware companies, what is the current bottleneck on mobile devices? Is it the actual wireless signal?

      It's the telco oligopoly

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    2. Re: What is the current bottleneck in mobile? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The display is the current bottleneck. I believe it uses half the power of a phone. Search for words like "MEMS display" or Qualcomm Mirasol for research ideas

  7. Re:Fast, faster, fastest by Matheus · · Score: 1

    Most of the time I love my Gen-1 Moto-X... *except when it's booting it *always takes way longer to start up than I want (haven't measured but it's in the 1-2 minute range) and then at worst when it decides to "Optimize Apps" and I've seen that take upwards of 45 minutes.. no way to cancel just have to wait there until it finishes with a useless phone.

    Whichever dev decided that was a good idea: Go fuck yourself and get a new profession.

  8. I hope the PR is true, but I'm not sure by Snotnose · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I worked at Qualcomm for some 9 years over 2 sessions. Taking a standard ARM core and improving it was their secret sauce for years. They even made money selling their improvements back to ARM. But talking to friends who still work there, Qualcomm is using more standard ARM and adding less secret sauce.

    Qualcomm is the best place I've ever worked for (37 years in the industry). My insiders tell me the QC I knew and loved was taken behind the barn and shot by Paul Jacobs, and it's nothing like what I remember. I hope they're wrong, but a couple of these guys have been there for 20+ years.

  9. I'm already throwing up by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "When combined, these two processors are designed to create amazingly realistic images that challenge people’s ability to tell the difference between a photo and a rendered image."

    Does it also offer an enriched multimedia experience, and immersive technologies that enables a whole new world of mobile computing? Shut up.

  10. which kernel ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Does that thing use a decently recent kernel or is it still that old 3.10 (or worse yet 3.4) seen on all ARM gadgets ?

    1. Re: which kernel ? by afidel · · Score: 1

      Stock AOSP kernel versions
      4.4 Kit Kat 3.10
      5.x Lollipop 3.16.1
      6.0 Marshmallow 3.18.10

      So I'd guess 820 devices will be at least 3.18.10 =)

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
  11. Still Miss Eudora by billstewart · · Score: 1

    I finally had to bite the bullet and give up Eudora earlier this year, because the changes to SSL/TLS by my email providers meant that Eudora could no longer set up an encrypted connection, because it couldn't handle 2048-bit keys. At least Thunderbird works better now than it did a few years back when I last evaluated it, so I use that on Windows. (Haven't found an IMAP client for Android tablets I really like, so I use webmail from there.)

    My mom's still using Eudora 1.4 on her Mac, over dialup, and it still works fine.

    --

    Bill Stewart
    New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
    1. Re:Still Miss Eudora by _merlin · · Score: 2

      I had that issue with an older e-mail client. I worked around it by creating an xinetd service listening on a local TCP port that establishes the TLS connection to the e-mail server using the ncat (from nmap project). The mail client opens a plaintext connection to the local server and it all works nicely.

    2. Re:Still Miss Eudora by Foresto · · Score: 1

      Have you tried AquaMail? I haven't used it on a tablet, but it's pretty nice on a phone.

  12. Re:Fast, faster, fastest by greenfruitsalad · · Score: 1

    i have a Samsung Galaxy S2 (very old in phone terms). i installed cyanogenmod 12.1 without gapps and use amazon appmarket for apps with caldav-sync and carddav-sync to sync with my google calendars/contacts. My phone boots up in 7 seconds unencrypted and 26 encrypted - that includes me typing encryption password. Battery now lasts 3 days instead of one.

    If i need an app that's only available in google playstore, i use free java program called 'raccoon' to download it and install it manually. http://www.onyxbits.de/raccoon

  13. Not bad, but still not there by 2ms · · Score: 1

    That's a big improvement, but twice the performance would still mean behind Apple. Twice the 810's performance would mean Typhoon (A8) caught, but Twister/A9 still quite a bit ahead. Not the best news for higher end users (e.g., Samsung) trying to compete directly with Apple. At least sounds like overheating dealt with.

    1. Re:Not bad, but still not there by afidel · · Score: 1

      The A9 isn't that far ahead unless you want to focus only on single core metrics. The only metric with a significant margin is multicore FP and nobody really cares because you'll pass any tough FP off to the GPU and the 810 is already about 75% as fast as the A9 in Manhattan offscreen so doubling GPU performance would give it a significant lead (but that's not a given since I haven't seen anything about the GPU being double). This really shouldn't be a surprise since they're similar core architectures on the same process node with nearly the same transistor budget so performance shouldn't be drastically different.

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
  14. Obligatory... by DanJ_UK · · Score: 1

    ...but can it run Crysis?

    --
    - Dan
    1. Re:Obligatory... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Perhaps if you put them in a Beowulf cluster...