Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Thanks CTOnews.com netizens born 2, OC_Formula clue delivery! CTOnews.com, September 6 (Xinhua)-- Qualcomm today unveiled a new SoC for the mid-range and entry-level smartphone market. Qualcomm updated its long-standing 600th and 400th series of chips, announcing the release of Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 and Snapdragon 4 Gen 1. Both SoC have received similar specification enhancements, using newer and faster IP modules-such as Arm Cortex-A78 derived CPU cores-and moving to newer, more modern manufacturing processes.

Following Qualcomm's extensive cascading IP strategy, both SoC lineups of this generation have migrated to Cortex-A78 CPU as their main CPU kernel, and the number of high-performance CPU cores has doubled on Snapdragon 6 Gen 1. The two SoC models also come with a faster Adreno GPU, but Qualcomm has not provided many details about the underlying hardware.

It is worth noting that Qualcomm's mid-/ low-end components did not jump to the Armv9 architecture in 2023. Unlike Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 and Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 with Arm's new Armv9 kernel, Qualcomm's cascade development strategy means that Snapdragon 6 and 4 series will lag behind, but will not have much impact on users.

Like the rest of the simplified "Gen" series, this means that Qualcomm is canceling a single model of its Kyro / Hexagon / Adreno / Spectra module.

Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 uses unknown 4nm process (Qualcomm has not specified whether it is Samsung or TSMC), replacing the previous Snapdragon 695. During this process, some major updates have been made to the CPU, camera, memory, and modem modules.

Qualcomm rescheduled the CPU core configuration for its mid-range SoC lineup. The previous 6 series used a 2x6 configuration with two high performance (Cortex-A7x) cores and six Cortex-A5x cores, while Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 converted it to a 4x4 configuration, very similar to what Qualcomm has done for Snapdragon 8 and 7 series. Coupled with the shift of the performance kernel to the Cortex-A78 CPU kernel, the CPU performance of Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 will be much better than the previous generation. Qualcomm says it has improved by 40%, but these cores will consume more power.

In terms of GPU, Qualcomm Adreno GPU supports variable rate shading, suggesting that the GPU IP from the new generation of Qualcomm, Qualcomm claims (up to) 35% improvement in GPU performance.

Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 supports LPDDR5 memory controllers, the first time Qualcomm has devolved it to a 6-series chip. The maximum frequency supported here is slightly lower than that of Qualcomm's high-end SoC, which is LPDDR5-5500. Combined with 32-bit memory bus, it can provide a total of 22GB / s memory bandwidth. This increases the memory bandwidth by about 29%.

Qualcomm has also updated the Hexagon DSP / AI module for its latest 6 series chips. The unnamed IP version is one of Qualcomm's "Generation 7" designs, which means that in addition to vector and scalar processing, it also includes tensor processing capabilities primarily designed to speed up AI reasoning.

As for the camera / ISP, Qualcomm uses a triple 12-bit ISP, with some modest performance improvements in pixel throughput. The Snapdragon 6 series (reintroduced) HDR support, and Qualcomm supports computing HDR on such SoC for the first time. As a result, Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 can handle 4K HDR video recording up to 30fps.

Last but not least, Qualcomm has also significantly upgraded its SoC wireless features, including cellular and Wi-Fi communications. In terms of cellular, the chip integrates Snapdragon X62 level modem and supports sub-6 and mmWave bands. Qualcomm did not provide details of the transmission speed, and the modem can theoretically achieve 2.9Gbps download speeds as high as 5G. At the same time, Wi-Fi radios were upgraded to replace the outdated Wi-Fi 5 FastConnect 6200 with a more modern Wi-Fi 6e based on its FastConnect 6700 IP.

CTOnews.com has learned that phones using new SoC such as Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 will be released and available in the first quarter of 2023.

Snapdragon 4 Gen 1 meanwhile, Qualcomm SoC's entry-level product is the new Snapdragon 4 Gen 1. Unlike Snapdragon 6 Gen 1, Qualcomm has not made extensive updates to the chip, but Snapdragon 4 Gen 1 still provides some modest improvements over the previous Snapdragon 480.

In terms of CPU, Snapdragon 4 Gen 1 has the same Cortex-A78 upgrade as Snapdragon 6 Gen 1, pairing the kernel with the Cortex-A55 kernel in a 2x6 configuration. In terms of architectural improvement, this is actually a bigger step than Snapdragon 6 Gen 1, because the Snapdragon 4 series used the Cortex-A76 kernel before. However, since the CPU frequency is still capped by 2.0GHz, all the performance improvements are due entirely to CPU architecture improvements. Overall, Qualcomm reported a 15 per cent improvement in CPU performance.

As for GPU, Snapdragon 4 Gen 1 has been upgraded to Adreno GPU. Qualcomm says GPU performance is (up to) 10% better. But since Qualcomm did not upgrade its memory controller-Snapdragon 4 Gen 1 still uses LPDDR4X-4266 memory on 32-bit buses-no memory bandwidth has been modified to support significantly faster GPU.

The camera / ISP module of Snapdragon 4 Gen 1 SoC is also very similar to its predecessor, Qualcomm uses a triple 12-bit ISP. A notable improvement is that Qualcomm significantly increased the maximum photo resolution to 108MP, almost doubled the number of pixels in a single shot, and in the process matched what the more powerful Snapdragon 6 series SoC could do.

At the same time, there are signs that the millimeter wave adoption rate in mobile phones is not as high as Qualcomm originally planned, and the Snapdragon 4 Gen 1 wireless suite is a step backwards. The 5G Snapdragon X51 modem finally gave up its support for mmWave and only supported the sub-6 band. However, this is sufficient to support download speeds up to 2.5Gbps, and upload speeds are now as high as 900Mbps. The Wi-Fi radio also remains the same, and Qualcomm uses Wi-Fi 5 plus Bluetooth 5.2 based on its FastConnect 6200 IP.

Finally, Snapdragon 4 Gen 1 is based on TSMC 6nm process. According to Qualcomm, the SoC phone will be shipped soon and is expected to be available by the end of the third quarter of this year.

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