In an age where technology changed in a blink of an eye, Qualcomm claims the crown for transforming mobile processors. Qualcomm has already improved smartphone performance by providing excellent processors like Snapdragon 720G, Snapdragon 845, Snapdragon 865, and Snapdragon 875, which are very much fast compared to other bands processors.
Recently, on 2 December 2020, at the company’s annual Snapdragon Tech Summit, Qualcomm has announced their new Snapdragon 888 SoC which comes with an integrated 5G modem.
Qualcomm loves machine learning and Artificial intelligence, so Qualcomm has designed their new Snapdragon 888 SoC so that their power AI-Engine can power up chipset and performance can be boosted to their highest capability.
Why is it called the Snapdragon 888?
Qualcomm’s biggest surprise about the 888 names, after the release of snapdragon 875, we all thought the new version would be 880 or 885. Qualcomm says the name 888 is straightforward, they always use ‘8’ to distinguish its premium tier chipsets, and so the 888 is simply as premium as it gets.
Let’s check the specifications of Snapdragon 888.
| Series | Qualcomm Snapdragon |
| Code Name | Cortex-X1 / A78 / A55 (Kryo 680) |
| Clock Rate | 1800 – 2840 MHz |
| Cache | 3 MB |
| Cores | 8 |
| CPU | Kryo 680 CPU |
| CPU Clock Speed | Up to 2.84 GHz |
| CPU Architecture | 64 bit |
| Manufacturing Technology | 5 nm |
| Power Consumption | 5 Watt |
| GPU | Qualcomm Adreno 660 |
Snapdragon 888 Specifications
CPU
The Snapdragon 888 is the first chip to get the official Cortex-X1 core, an ARM-based design co-develop by Qualcomm. Compared to Old A78, the X1 can execute 33% more instructions per clock, which can double the SMID hardware and Capacity of the L1 and L2 caches.
The Snapdragon 888 works on 8 core and runs at 2.84 GHz.
Older versions of all the processors come with 7 nm manufacturing technology, but the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 processor comes with revolutionary Manufacturing Technology of 5 nm. These 5 nm chips can reduce power usage up to 30%, which can improve battery performance.
GPU
Snapdragon 888 comes with the Adreno 660 GPU, which targets 35% faster rendering performance while increasing power efficiency by 20%. The Adreno 660 is designed in such a way which gives a high frame rate and low latency gaming. The main goal is to get a 144fps screen rate for games that need it, and it also comes with several tweaks to enhance image quality as well.
The Adreno 660 GPU supports 10-bit HDR and sub-pixel rendering, which can improve the constancy of OLED displays with Mura compensation.
Camera
The Snapdragon 888 is the Snapdragon with a triple ISP. The previous 800- series chips come with a dual ISP. This feature allows the smartphone to process the three separate camera streams simultaneously, which has multiple uses. The 888 can handle three 4K HDR video streams and capture three 28MP photos simultaneously.
This will make smooth transitions from ultrawide to wide to tele cameras since each camera gets its own ISP.
Snapdragon 888 comes with Qualcomm Spectra 580 image single processor with triple 14-bits ISPs and can capture 120 FPS burst photo at 12MP and Capture in near darkness with new low light architecture.
Display
Snapdragon 888 provides on-device display support of 60Hz for 4K display and 144Hz for QHD+ display, and Maximum external display supports 10-bit color depth and 2020 color gamut on 60Hz.
Connectivity
Just like other Snapdragon 888 is the first chipset to use the snapdragon X60 5G modem. The previous version modem we intended as an external chip, but the 888 modems are integrated within the chip. This third-generation modem supports the sub-6 and also supports mmWave flavors of 5G. Which offers download speeds of up to 7.5 Gbps and upload speeds up to 3 Gbps.
The Snapdragon 888 comes with the FastConnect 6900 system with features like WI-FI 6G(With 6 GHz band), and it can reach speeds up to 3.6 Gbps, which is the fastest mobile WI-FI in the industry. And Bluetooth 5.2 with dual antennas is supported as well.
Artificial Intelligence
Snapdragon 888 comes with the 6th generation AI Engine combining the new Hexagon 780 and the GPU. The Hexagon 780 processor comes with Fused AI-accelerator architecture, which boasts everything from photography to gaming to connectivity.
Hexagon 780’s Tensor Accelerator increases the compute capacity by 2x, and Scalar Accelerator improves the performance by 50%.
Memory
The Snapdragon 888 supports memory density up to 16 GB and supports LP-DDR5 RAM memory up to 3200 MHz.
Security
The Snapdragon 888 is the first mobile chipset to come with the Content Authenticity Initiative standard. Which can capture cryptographically-sealed images, which can include tamper-resistant metadata that prove an image is authentic.
Snapdragon 888 comes with Hypervisor, which can run multiple OSes simultaneously with enhanced securities. The Snapdragon 3D sonic sensor and Qualcomm 3D Sonic Max features to improve the biometric security.
Charging
The Snapdragon 888 comes with QuickCharge 5, which can handle 100W+ fast charging while keeping the heat minimum. The QuickCharge 5 technology is 70% more efficient and supports 0-100% charging in less than 15 minutes. It is compatible with USB Power Delivery and backward compatible with previous QC generations going back to 2.0.
Location
The new Snapdragon 888 supports GPS systems like Beidou, Galileo, GLONASS, Dual-frequency GNSS, NavIC, NavIC enabled, GPS, GNSS, QZSS, and SBAS. It also supports technologies like Sidewalk/lane-level Positioning and Sensor-Assisted Positioning, which helps identify routes and roads’ distance.
Audio
The Snapdragon 888 Soc comes with AI accelerated voice features such as voice call, voice activation, and conversational AI. The Hexagon Voice Assistant Accelerator helps Snapdragon 888 to accelerate the voice signal processing hardware.
The New Qualcomm Aqstic audio codec(which supports up to WCD9885) to produce noise-free audio.
Gaming
With the new Snapdragon 888, Qualcomm has focused on mobile gaming also. With New Snapdragon Elite Gaming and new Variable Rate Shading(VRS) comes to the mobile devices for the first time. VRS is powered by the Adreno 660 GPU, which helps mobile devices to reach their highest potential and high frame rate.
The VRS increases 30% of the gameplay performance as compared to the older version.
Qualcomm has introduced a new technology called Game Quick Touch which focuses on touch response time. This new technology dramatically reduces touch latency by up to 20%. The touch latency depends on many aspects like the timing of a game’s display v-sync and its frame rate submission.
Other features like NFC, API Supports for OpenCL 2.0 FP, OpenGL® ES 3.2, Vulkan® 1.1, DX12 are also available.
Mobile Supported
Snapdragon 888 SoC is all set to power the flagship Android phones like OnePlus 9 and 9 Pro, ASUS ROG Phone 5, iQOO 7, Vivo X60 Pro+, Mi 11, and the most famous Samsung Galaxy S21 series.
Final Words
There are no doubts that Qualcomm has done a very great job on snapdragon and Qualcomm has completely changed the smartphone’s technology with the Revolutionary 5 nm chips. We Hope Qualcomm comes with more amazing features in the future and if you guys have any suggestions about Snapdragon 888 SoC comment down in our comment sections.
