Qualcomm officially announced the Snapdragon 855 today . The new high-end processor is to be installed from the beginning of 2019 in various smartphones and also enable devices with integrated 5G support. The US chip manufacturer now gave some of the first important cornerstones of its new top SoC.
As usual, Qualcomm initially opened its so-called Snapdragon Summit with only a lengthy keynote speech, including appearances by various partners, all designed to highlight the progress towards the introduction of 5G mobile networks. Deeper details of the new Snapdragon 855 but you will reveal only in the coming days.
Qualcomm initially confirmed that the new chip will actually carry the name Snapdragon 855. Due to internal documents and sightings in various databases, we also initially assumed that we would switch to the new name Snapdragon 8150, since the new SoC is now internally referred to as SM8150 and not more than SDM855. As already reported, the production takes place on a 7 nanometer scale, so that for the first time Qualcomm will also use the new, shrunken structural width.
In terms of performance, Qualcomm promised the introduction of a new, multi-core Neural Processing Unit (NPU) of the fourth generation, which is expected to offer three times the performance of processing artificial intelligence data compared to its predecessor, the Snapdragon 845. Compared to the KI solutions from Huawei (Kirin 980) and Apple (A12 Fusion) one still wants to be able to offer up to twice as high AI performance.
For the first time, Qualcomm also integrates a so-called Computer Vision Image Signal Processor (CV-ISP), which should increase the performance in so-called computational photography. Among other things, more smartphones to provide better images in low light conditions by processing the image data using machine learning and other AI functions and so, for example, provides brighter pictures.
Also new is the so-called Snapdragon Elite Gaming ecosystem, where Qualcomm is taking a number of measures to optimize the new Snapdragon 855 for use in the game – without giving details so far. Presumably, certain areas of the system-on-chip should be turned on or off when games are used to tease out more power.
More details will be announced tomorrow.