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Processor

The powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 Plus 5G Mobile Platform | Latest Updates (2020)

by Mebin Varghese July 24, 2020

written by Mebin Varghese

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 Plus comes with Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2, faster CPU and GPU support

A reference design of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 Plus.

Image Credit : Qualcomm.com

Qualcomm unveiled the Snapdragon 865, their new mobile platform for 2020 new Android mobile apps, at the 2019 Snapdragon Tech Summit. The system-on-chip has proved to be the best SoC smartphone so far in 2020, beating the Exynos 990, Kirin 990, and MediaTek Dimensity 1000L. It was used in lauded flagships such as the OnePlus 8 series, the Xiaomi Mi 10, the Snapdragon Galaxy S20 models, and many more. Although the Snapdragon 865 remains the best-in-class on the Android smartphone market, Qualcomm has launched the Snapdragon 865 Plus, a mid-cycle refresh. It fits the pattern of previous mid-cycle Snapdragon refreshments including the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 Plus in 2019 and the Snapdragon 821 back in 2016.

The Snapdragon 865 Plus is a continuation of the Snapdragon 865. According to Qualcomm, the Snapdragon 865 has powered more than 140 devices (announced or currently in development). The number is the largest number of individual premium-tier designs driven this year by a single mobile platform (although we have not seen these designs yet released on the sector).

Image Credit: Qualcomm.com

With the exception of three points, the latest Snapdragon 865 Plus is exactly the same as the original Snapdragon 865. Firstly, the Prime core of the Kryo 585 (ARM Cortex-A77) CPU is now clocked at 3.1GHz, up from the standard Snapdragon 865’s 2.84GHz clock speed. The peak speed of the 3.1GHz clock finally matches the ideal predictions of ARM as regards the Cortex-A77. Snapdragon 855 Plus last year had increased its Prime core (ARM Cortex-A76-based) clock speed to 2.96GHz. The Kryo 585 ‘s Prime Core 3.1GHz clock speed is the highest ever seen in any Snapdragon SoC so far. The residual clock speeds of the CPU cores are untouched.

Image Credit: The Verge

Second, the Adreno 650 GPU has a 10 per cent faster rendering of graphics. This makes it clear that Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 Plus has increased the GPU’s clock speed, but in the press release the details about this were not given. Last year’s Snapdragon 855 Plus also featured 15 percent improvements in graphics performance over regular Snapdragon 855, so the incremental improvement level is similar. It should be noted that the 10 percent increase in GPU performance will not be sufficient to equal the GPU of the Apple A13, for example, as the peak delta and constant GPU performance will remain too high to resolve a 10 percent improvement in the performance of the Adreno 650.

Also expected to expand Apple’s lead over Qualcomm here is the upcoming Apple A14. At the other hand, the 10 percent improvement in GPU output would expand Qualcomm’s advantage over its SoC competition exclusively in the Android segment, as none of the other SoC vendors have even matched the GPU performance of the standard Adreno 650 so far. In the Exynos 990, Kirin 990, and Dimension 1000L, respectively, the Mali-G77MP11, the Mali-G76MP16, and the Mali-G77MC9 have all accomplished worse than Qualcomm in GPU tests performed, showing inferior per-watt performance.

Finally, and most notably, the Snapdragon 865 Plus sports the latest FastConnect 6900 mobile Wi-Fi and Bluetooth communication system from Qualcomm. This was announced in May 2020 and the headline features it brings are Wi-Fi 6E support (Wi-Fi 6 extended to 6GHz) and Bluetooth 5.2 support. According to Qualcomm, the peak Wi-Fi speeds of the FastConnect 6900 reach up to 3.6Gbps-the highest in the industry. The speed improvements were done thanks to the U.S. FCC freeing up the 6GHz spectrum to 1200MHz for Wi-Fi.

The Snapdragon 865 Plus also bears characteristics of the standard Snapdragon 865, such as the full range of capabilities of Qualcomm Snapdragon Elite Gaming, global 5 G, and “ultra-intuitive” AI. High-quality gaming with first-to-mobile apps such as updatable GPU drivers and screen forward rendering, 5 G gameplay up to 144fps, and real 10-bit HDR gaming is said to be delivering. Compared to the standard Snapdragon 865, the Snapdragon 865 Plus includes Qualcomm’s Hexagon 698 with Hexagon Vector Extensions and Hexagon Tensor Accelerator, 5th-generation AI Processor, Dual 14-bit Spectra 480 ISP, Snapdragon X55 5 G modem-RF device, and more. It is developed on a 7 nm DUV (N7P) second-generation process by TSMC.

In the next generation of flagship phones will include the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 Processor, including the ASUS ROG Phone 3 and the Lenovo Legion. Qualcomm says commercial devices based on the Snapdragon 865 Plus are scheduled to be released in the third quarter of 2020 and we believe this month will be the first announcements.

Key Features Of Snapdragon 865 Plus

Qualcomm ® KryoTM 585 offers a 10 per cent improvement in efficiency compared to Snapdragon 865
Qualcomm ® AdrenoTM 650 GPU presents graphics from Snapdragon 865 up to 10 per cent faster
Snapdragon Elite Gaming ‘s complete suite of apps including: Screen Forward Rendering, Qualcomm ® Game Color Plus v2.0, Qualcomm ® Smoother App
Real 10-bit HDR gaming and GPU drivers for the first time enabled on smartphones
Supports worldwide roaming and Multi-SIM services
To support crisp, stable and sensitive audio, Bluetooth 5.2, Dual Bluetooth Antennas, aptX Pack and latest LE audio features combine.
4-Stream (2×2 + 2×2) Dual Band Simultaneous harnesses of multiple antennas and bands to deliver superior speed / latency performance compared to common two-stream implementations.
6 GHz (Wi-Fi 6E) operation dramatically expands the Wi-Fi capacity by adding up to 1200 MHz of additional Wi-Fi spectrum.
FastConnect 6900 extends leading features of Wi-Fi 6 technology, and incorporates advanced audio capabilities.
Suitable for standalone and non-standalone modes
Suitable for standalone and non-standalone modes
Appears to support all key regions, which include mmWave, sub-6, TDD, FDD and Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS) bands.
CV-ISP functions at 2 Gigapixels per second
Dolby Vision for Smartphone Video Capture
No limit on HD video slow motion capture at 960 FPS
Qualcomm ® Sensing Headlight
Supports speech, audio, sensors and Accelerator Hexagon Voice Assistant for advanced voice use cases
Qualcomm AqsticTM Audio Technologies offers native DSD support, PCM up to 384 kHz/32-bit and “Golden Ears” filter that can be customized
Low power AI voice assistance assistant with contextual knowledge
Qualcomm ® aptXTM Audio adapter for powerful, low cost and high remarkable featured wireless audio

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July 24, 2020 4 comments

Intel Processor

Intel Lakefield processor is brought to challenge ARM

by Amal Varghese June 11, 2020

written by Amal Varghese

Details of the new Intel Lakefield processors are out

After their failure with Atom SoC that was launched with the ASUS ZenFone 2, Intel had dropped plans to produce SoCs. This was mainly because of their technology being inferior to the smartphone SoC giants like Snapdragon or Apple Bionic series. However, the company has carried out its pursuits in low voltage chips designed to power 2-in-1 devices, laptops, foldable devices, etc, while completely keeping away from smartphone industry. But, Intel’s Core M, later came to be known as the Core Y series, which is still being used in laptops such as the Apple MacBook Air.

Now, Intel has disclosed more details about its upcoming “Lakefield” chip, which is not an Atom chip nor a pure Core based chip (although they will be branded as part of the “Intel Core” lineup). They can be viewed as the successor of the Core M/Core Y-series philosophy, and are designed to harden Intel’s leadership position against ARM in the ultra-mobile device space.

Focus of Intel Lakefield Processor

Intel Lakefield Processor is its first chips to merge its Core i3 and i5 hardware together with low-power “Tremont” Atom cores. Officially, they’re called “Intel Core processors with hybrid technology.” The company is positioning Lakefield as the ideal hardware for incredibly thin laptops and foldable.

It is of no doubt that the 10 nanometer based core i3 and i5 hardware will handle ponderous workloads, while this less challenging tasks move over to the Atom cores, similar to the arrangement Qualcomm uses. And unlike the Snapdragon 8cx laptop chipset, which is limited to ARM compatible apps, Lakefield processors will also run all 32-bit and 64-bit Windows software.

Intel is able to combine multiple chip architectures and onboard memory onto a single processor thanks to its Foveros 3D packaging technology. That allows the company to stack multiple logic and memory dies on top of each other, instead of spreading them out on a flat 2D plane like traditional processors. The basic takeaway is that Intel Lakefield processors also won’t need to take up much physical space, making them ideal for very thin devices.

There will be two Intel Lakefield processors available at first in the form of the Core i5-L16G7 and the Core i3-L13G4. The differences between the two can be seen in the table below.

Processor Number	Graphics	Cores / Threads	Graphics (EUs)	Cache	TDP	Base Freq (GHz)	Max Single Core Turbo (GHz)	Max All Core Turbo (GHz)	Graphics Max Freq (GHz)	Memory
i5-L16G7	Intel UHD Graphics	5/5	64	4MB	7W	1.4	3.0	1.8	Up to 0.5	LPDDR4X-4267
i3-L13G4	Intel UHD Graphics	5/5	48	4MB	7W	0.8	2.8	1.3	Up to 0.5	LPDDR4X-4267

The i5 Intel Lakefield Processor has more graphics Execution Units (EUs): 64 vs. 48. The grahics maximum frequency is capped at up to 0.5GHz which is comparatively much less than Amber Lake’s 1.05GHz, which again proposes that Intel is taking a broad but measured way to enhance their performance while keeping power requirements in check at the same time. Both of them have the same TDP at 7W. The base frequency of i5 is 1.4GHz, while the i3 has barely of 0.8GHz base frequency.

The max single core turbo frequency (applicable only for the Sunny Cove core) is 3.0GHz and 2.8GHz for the i5 and the i3 respectively, while the max all core turbo frequency is 1.8GHz and 1.3GHz respectively. Presumably, Intel Lakefield Processor is relying on Sunny Cove’s increased IPC over Skylake to offset these low clock speeds. Keep in mind there is only one “big” core (in comparative) terms, so don’t expect these ultra-mobile chips to compete with regular U series chips found in the Ice Lake, Comet Lake, and Tiger Lake platforms. The memory support is LPDDR4X-4267, which is incidentally higher than Ice Lake.

Gregory Bryant, Intel senior vice president in the Client Computing Group, displays a “Lakefield” reference board during Intel Corporation’s news event at CES 2019 on Jan. 7, 2019, in Las Vegas. Lakefield features a hybrid CPU architecture with Intel’s Foveros 3D packaging technology. Intel displays how its technology is the foundation for the world’s most important innovations and advances at CES 2019 from Jan. 8-11 in Las Vegas. (Credit: Walden Kirsch/Intel Corporation)

AnandTech was able to provide more detail on the Intel Lakefield Processor. Supposedly, Intel told the publication that the Intel Lakefield Processor will use the Tremont cores for almost everything, and only call on the Sunny Cove core for user-experience type of interactions, such as typing or interacting with the screen.

Overall, the Lakefield platform seems to be very promising. The biggest flaw of Intel’s low-power chips has been that up until now, they have been priced too expensive. It doesn’t seem that this will be changing with Lakefield, but at least consumers will get to expect new types of PCs such as the aforementioned first three devices powered by Lakefield. At least for now, Intel remains dominant in PC because of the overwhelming advantage of app support, and announcements such as Lakefield mean that ARM and Qualcomm will need to keep iterating to overcome Intel’s intrinsic instruction set advantage.

June 11, 2020 0 comment

Android Motorola Processor Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 Smartphones

Motorola Edge+ is launched in India with High Price category

by Ameya Joglekar May 19, 2020

written by Ameya Joglekar

Motorola Edge+ price in India is set at Rs. 74,999 for the single 12GB RAM variant.

Motorola Edge+ has been released in India as Motorola’s latest flagship phone. The smartphone launched globally last month — alongside the Motorola Edge. It comes with a curved design that includes a hole-punch display. Motorola has also installed dual stereo speakers tuned by Waves to deliver an enhanced multimedia experience. Other key highlights of the Motorola Edge+ include 108-megapixel primary shooter and Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 SoC. Also, the Motorola Edge+ runs Android 10 and is touted to be upgradable to Android 12.

Motorola Edge+ price in India, launch offers

The Motorola Edge+ price in India is set at Rs. 74,999 for the single 12GB + 256GB storage variant. The phone comes in Smoky Sangria and Thunder Grey colour options. Moreover, it will be available for purchase through Flipkart and major offline retail stores starting May 26. The pre-bookings are now open.

Launch offers include flat Rs. 7,500 instant discount on purchases made using ICICI bank credit cards on Flipkart. The buyers will get the same amount of cashback on purchasing the phone offline using the ICICI Bank credit cards. The instant discount and cashback will be valid on EMI as well as non-EMI transactions.

To recall, the Motorola Edge+ debuted in Europe and the US markets last month with a price tag of EUR 699 (roughly Rs. 57,700) and $999 (roughly Rs. 75,600).

Motorola Edge+ specifications, features

The single-SIM (Nano) Motorola Edge+ runs and features a 6.7-inch full-HD+ “Endless Edge” display with 90Hz refresh rate and HDR10+ support. Under the hood, the phone has the octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 SoC, paired with Adreno 650 GPU and 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM. The quad rear camera setup includes a 108-megapixel primary sensor with an f/1.8 lens and optical image stabilization (OIS). Further, the camera setup has a 16-megapixel ultra-wide-angle shooter that comes with a field of view (FoV) of 117 degrees. You’ll also get an 8-megapixel telephoto shooter with an f/2.4 aperture and OIS support as well as Time-of-Flight (ToF) sensor.

For selfies and video chat, the Motorola Edge+ has a 25-megapixel camera sensor at the front that is coupled with an f/2.0 lens.

The Motorola Edge+ has 256GB of UFS 3.0 onboard storage that doesn’t support expansion via a microSD card. Connectivity options on the phone include 5G (NR sub-6GHz), 4G LTE, Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth v5.1, GPS/ A-GPS, USB Type-C, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. Onboard sensors include an accelerometer, gyroscope, ambient light, and a proximity sensor. Further, the phone has an in-display fingerprint sensor.

Motorola has provided a 5,000mAh battery that supports 18W TurboPower wired charging, 18W wireless charging, and 5W wireless reverse power sharing. Besides, the phone measures 161.1×71.4×9.6mm and weighs 203 grams.

May 19, 2020 0 comment

Computer Processor

AMD Ryzen 9 3990X 64-Core CPU For Just ₹3.5 Lakhs

by Robin Sunny April 30, 2020

written by Robin Sunny

You don’t normally write ‘just’ and ‘₹3.5 Lakhs’ in the same sentence, but with a CPU this good, compared to Intel, AMD is practically giving them away.

AMD announced this beast of a CPU at CES 2020, the 3990X with the price tag of just $4,000 (₹2.8 lakh technically, but this is a converted value). Most of the time, especially in the CPU market, this type of pricing is a contradiction in terms, considering that this is a 64-core CPU

Saying that this undercuts Intel is quite literally an understatement. Even the high-end Intel HEDT(High End Desktop) CPU, i9-10980XE, is $1000 and has a mere 18 cores. Even the server based Xeon Platinum 8280 with 28-cores and 56-threads, with the MSRP of $10,000 (₹7.1 lakh, this is a converted price).

The 3990X sports a 2.9GHz base clock, a 4.3GHz boost clock, a 256MB L3 cache and a impressive 2.9GHz to 3.1GHz all-core (considering that this has a 280W TDP).

3990x’s performance of 24K is nearly 1.45x higher than the 3970x, but Cinebench has typically stronger scaling than this. Then again, this is the first time the application has tested these many cores. It can also be possible the poor scaling is due to the application not addressing this many cores properly.

Now the downside to this CPU might be the four RAM channels to feed the insane 64-cores. AMD recommend at least 64GB of RAM for this chip but 256GB might be more appropriate, depending on the workload.

Now is this CPU worth investing in? As with the other Ryzen processors, today’s software and operating systems still are not designed to fully utilize massively parallel x86 architectures, but with time and effort AMD has pushed the industry to fully utilize it’s silicon. The Threadripper 3990X, due to loads of software limitations is a very specialized workhorse, mostly for the most demanding customers in a narrow field of visual effects and rendering world.

All in all the AMD Ryzen 9 3990X represents the best value to performance in what is arguably a very new market segment, with software slowly evolving to take advantage of the chip’s resources.

April 30, 2020 0 comment

Computer Apple Inc.Brand Processor

No more Intel for Mac? ARM-based Macs to be showing up very soon.

by Amal Varghese April 23, 2020

written by Amal Varghese

As per the rumors from a reputable source, the ARM based MacBook Pro may be scheduled to launch in the near future. KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo stated, that the new line of Apple laptops may arrive in the next 12-18 months and would once again feature an in-house processor which will not be developed by Intel.

Since Apple’s transition to Intel Processors in 2006, Apple has been constantly releasing Intel-based Macs, currently powered with the new-get i7 and i9 Processors. This change from Intel to its own ARM-based Processor will make massive difference.

As of now, it is rumored that ARM-based Processor for Mac would make its debut in the fall of 2021. Even as we speak of it, Apple has not yet made any confirmation regarding the same, but again, further rumor states that Apple has been in the process of hiring staff for building desktop and laptop chips of its own, like it started doing with iPhone.

This news may not sound good to Apple’s competitors as Apple has a very keen eye for perfection. On one hand, the iPhone and iPad in-house Processors are definitely far ahead of its competitors. The rumoured A14 bionic is already crossing the limits of a smartphone processor. This ARM-based Mac Processor may aggressively power the MacBooks to a an extreme level and would definitely be prices high. The current 16inch MacBook Pro could cost you around ₹ 2,29,990.

April 23, 2020 3 comments

Brand Apple Inc.Computer Processor

No more Intel for Mac? ARM-based Macs to be showing up very soon.

by Amal Varghese April 19, 2020

written by Amal Varghese

Image Source: Pixabay

April 19, 2020 1 comment