Qualcomm Tech Summit 2020: Day Two Live Blog (10:00 ET, 15:00 UTC)
by Dr. Ian Cutress on December 2, 2020 9:42 AM EST09:51AM EST - With day one of Qualcomm's annual summit announcing its new Snapdragon 888 smartphone processor, today is the day where we get all those shiny technical details. Stick with us here at AnandTech from 10am ET to get the information as it is announced through our Live Blog!
09:57AM EST - We're a few minutes from starting
09:58AM EST - Yesterday Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon 888, and X60 modem, but didn't go into any of the details we love. That was left for today's keynote presentation
10:00AM EST - Here we go
10:00AM EST - Don McGuire on the virtual stage
10:01AM EST - Snapdragon sets the benchmark for the connected age
10:01AM EST - 888 = Eight Eighty Eight
10:01AM EST - That jacket looks odd
10:01AM EST - Ziad Asghar for the Technical Deep Dive
10:01AM EST - Major upgrade in every respect
10:01AM EST - Culmination of many years of work, thousands of engineers
10:02AM EST - Enhancing the experience of technology in the home to make the smartphone surpass all of them
10:03AM EST - Smartphones outweigh TVs with 4K/8K HDR
10:03AM EST - Amazing camera experience
10:03AM EST - Communicate with people while watching Netflix
10:03AM EST - Smartphones are more versatile than a separate camera
10:03AM EST - AI augmentation
10:03AM EST - multiple feed recording simultaneously
10:03AM EST - Size, weight, AI effects
10:04AM EST - Fiber gateways
10:04AM EST - More bandwidth in a smartphone
10:04AM EST - Fewer dropped calls on 5G
10:04AM EST - Now gaming consoles - the future of gaming is mobile
10:04AM EST - Be on the move and play anywhere
10:04AM EST - 'gaming is a multiplayer activity' - I dispute that. I really do
10:05AM EST - Gaming is very different on the smartphone
10:05AM EST - One device does it all, powered by S888
10:06AM EST - Imaging and best-in-class camera experience is often #1 requirement for a smartphone
10:06AM EST - 1.4 trillion smartphone pictures taken in 2020
10:06AM EST - Most smartphone gamers play 6+ hours a week
10:07AM EST - Mobile gaming is a social norm
10:07AM EST - XR is taking gaming to a new level
10:07AM EST - New virtual worlds
10:07AM EST - AI also augments smartphones
10:07AM EST - operating behind the scenes
10:07AM EST - Voice recognition, navigation assistance, recommendation for sales engines
10:08AM EST - System level optimizations from SoC to modem and Wi-Fi and antenna
10:08AM EST - Qualcomm can connect to any 5G network in the world
10:08AM EST - QuickCharge, Sonic Fingerprint
10:09AM EST - (all parts of the Snapdragon package offering - not every vendor will buy everything in that offering)
10:09AM EST - Audio technologies
10:09AM EST - Working with mobile and audio brands
10:09AM EST - Qualcomm Aqstic Audio
10:10AM EST - form factor innovation for add-ons
10:10AM EST - headphones, watches, headsets
10:10AM EST - AR/VR/XR glasses
10:11AM EST - Most cutting edge technology on S888
10:11AM EST - Connectivity
10:11AM EST - Integrated 5G RF X60 Modem
10:12AM EST - 3rd Gen mmWave + sub6
10:12AM EST - Peak 7.5 Gbps
10:12AM EST - 3 Gbps Upload
10:12AM EST - 5G carrier aggregation across FDD,TDD
10:12AM EST - Qualcomm FastConnect 6900 - Wi-Fi 6/6E with 6 GHz
10:13AM EST - 3.6 Gbps on Wi-Fi
10:13AM EST - 4K QAM, 160 MHz, 4-stream DBS
10:13AM EST - Fastest and most consistent connections
10:13AM EST - Bluetooth 5.2 with dual antenna support
10:13AM EST - Camera
10:13AM EST - Qualcomm powers the most cameras in the world, measured by photos taken
10:13AM EST - Tripling down on the future of photography
10:14AM EST - Capture three different camera streams at once
10:14AM EST - Spectra 580
10:14AM EST - Support Staggered HDR sensors. Computational HDR support
10:14AM EST - 2.7 gigapixel/sec with Spectra 580
10:14AM EST - +35% gen over gen
10:14AM EST - GPU
10:15AM EST - Adreno GPU
10:15AM EST - Shipped over 2.5 billion Adreno GPUs
10:15AM EST - New breed of gaming smartphones
10:15AM EST - Most efficient graphics IP in the industry, and ever
10:15AM EST - Biggest YoY increase ever +35%
10:15AM EST - 20% more power efficient
10:15AM EST - Display enhancements
10:16AM EST - New hardware in display pipeline such as sub-pixel rendering
10:16AM EST - Built on sustained performance
10:16AM EST - Competitors drop off very quickly
10:16AM EST - Working with mobile gaming industry
10:16AM EST - Now AI
10:17AM EST - Qualcomm AI enables 1.5 billion devices
10:17AM EST - AI has outpaced all others in processing demands
10:17AM EST - New Hexagon processor ground-up redesign
10:17AM EST - Scalar, Vector, Tensor all now fused
10:17AM EST - 16x Shared Memory compared to prior product
10:17AM EST - 3x perf/watt, 2x tensor
10:18AM EST - Enabling new use cases on device
10:18AM EST - Now Qualcomm sensor hub
10:18AM EST - 2nd gen this time
10:18AM EST - added dedicated AI processor
10:18AM EST - Low power AI cases
10:18AM EST - Can work on data streams without firing up Hexagon
10:18AM EST - CPU
10:18AM EST - Kryo 680
10:19AM EST - +25% perf, +25% power efficient
10:19AM EST - Cortex X1
10:19AM EST - 1 x 2.84GHz X1 + 3 x 2.4GHz A78 + 4x 1.8 GHz A55
10:19AM EST - CPU built for sustained performance, not just benchmark runs
10:20AM EST - 6th Gen AI engine
10:20AM EST - Combined CPU+GPU+AI = 26 TOPs
10:20AM EST - Redesigned tools
10:20AM EST - Qualcomm AI Engine Direct
10:21AM EST - Now Security
10:21AM EST - New experiences built on secure foundations
10:21AM EST - New technologies
10:21AM EST - Snapdragon with hypervisor support
10:21AM EST - Multi-OS support
10:21AM EST - app isolation
10:22AM EST - Profile support based on hypervisor
10:22AM EST - Work profile, personal profile etc but secure
10:22AM EST - Multi-user as well
10:22AM EST - Apps could also be isolated within a profile
10:23AM EST - Works with Qualcomm Wireless Edge Services. Secure hardware-based attestation
10:24AM EST - Remotely activate chipset and app features
10:24AM EST - Developers can use these services in their apps today
10:24AM EST - Enabling secure remote management
10:24AM EST - Also secure photography
10:25AM EST - New security standard to tell users that a photo is genuine without edit
10:25AM EST - Crypto seal
10:26AM EST - Snapdragon is world first CIA compliant camera system
10:27AM EST - Deeper into the camera subsystem now
10:27AM EST - PJ to the virtual stage
10:28AM EST - Professional quality photo and video
10:28AM EST - Taking multiple images and using the best parts of each
10:28AM EST - Enabling smartphone innovation
10:29AM EST - Using smaller process node and transistor budget to enable 3x ISP units
10:31AM EST - Most flagship smartphones have 3+ cameras with different lenses
10:31AM EST - Triple concurrency enables three cameras to capture 4K HDR at the same time
10:31AM EST - Running all three cameras means that no longer have to guess if a user is going up or down to different cameras
10:32AM EST - 2x64 MP at 60 Hz + 1x28MP at 30 Hz
10:32AM EST - or 120 photos per second at 12 MP
10:33AM EST - Combined with AI
10:33AM EST - Enhanced low light
10:33AM EST - 0.1 lux
10:34AM EST - ISP designed for the image sensors due out 2021
10:35AM EST - Staggered HDR sensors coming out in 2021
10:35AM EST - Separate short, medium, long images at once in HDR
10:35AM EST - Computational HDR requires more than 10-bit precision
10:36AM EST - No longer any tradeoff for enabling HDR
10:36AM EST - 10-bit HEIF support
10:37AM EST - All capture modes supported
10:37AM EST - enabling video chat
10:38AM EST - (but we still need a decent native webcam app that uses these features)
10:39AM EST - S888 will enable 4K at 120 Hz playback
10:39AM EST - (previous generations could record, but not playback)
10:40AM EST - First Qualcomm Spectra with 10th Gen 3A with AI
10:40AM EST - Neural Net focus and exposure
10:41AM EST - designed in virtual reality
10:41AM EST - Shifting the object in focus as you take a video
10:42AM EST - Apps can enable track and zoom automatically using AI
10:43AM EST - AI trained on different categories for various filters
10:43AM EST - Now to gaming on S888
10:43AM EST - Macey Davis
10:44AM EST - Leader in gaming innovation
10:44AM EST - Snapdragon Elite Gaming
10:44AM EST - Ultrasmooth gaming
10:44AM EST - 144 FPS, 10-bit HDR
10:45AM EST - Updateable GPU driver on a per-game basis
10:45AM EST - Forward Rendering
10:45AM EST - Game Color Plus
10:47AM EST - 'Desktop Level Capabilities'
10:47AM EST - Elite Gaming in AR/VR
10:47AM EST - This video shows people sitting around in public playing games. (A) Do people meet friends just to play on their phones (B) Meeting people?
10:48AM EST - Mobile is half of all gaming revenue worldwide
10:48AM EST - More AAA games on mobile than ever before
10:48AM EST - Mobile gaming has exploded despite the global situation
10:49AM EST - Mobile gaming requires predicting performance of smartphone silicon years in advance
10:50AM EST - 2.6 billion mobile gamers worldwide, mostly on Android
10:50AM EST - Console-based cloud gaming
10:50AM EST - enabled by 5G
10:50AM EST - Xbox Game Pass Ultimate on Snapdragon S888
10:51AM EST - Dolby Atmos
10:51AM EST - Lower latency audio with Qualcomm Audio
10:51AM EST - Lower touch latency
10:52AM EST - Pro gamers require quicker reactions
10:52AM EST - Sponsor of PUBG global champs
10:54AM EST - New Qualcomm Game Quick Touch
10:54AM EST - Vertical sync and touch submission resulting in delayed frames
10:54AM EST - This avoids that issue
10:55AM EST - Touch to display improved by 20%
10:55AM EST - Variable Rate Shading
10:56AM EST - Reducing workloads and improving frame rates / resolutions
10:56AM EST - or lowers power consumption for longer game play
10:56AM EST - VRS up to 2x2
10:56AM EST - 40% reduction in pixel shading on average
10:56AM EST - without sacrificing visual fidelity
10:58AM EST - Also allows for parity with desktop and console features
10:59AM EST - Now onto more detail on AI
11:00AM EST - Qualcomm is in use in a lot of the default apps on smartphones today, and social media apps
11:00AM EST - Developsers are at the heart of AI
11:01AM EST - Qualcomm AI Innovation Challenge in China
11:01AM EST - Neural Processing SDK
11:03AM EST - using AI to sense the world around
11:03AM EST - Hexagon 780 has been rearchitected
11:03AM EST - New fused design
11:04AM EST - New fused sensor reduces memory latency between segments
11:04AM EST - Perf/watt up to 3x
11:05AM EST - GPU now supports 4-input mixed precision dot product
11:05AM EST - wave matrix multiplication for FP16/FP32
11:05AM EST - Using AI to remove elements from video
11:06AM EST - (uses third party apps)
11:06AM EST - live background removal in 4K30 video
11:07AM EST - Interesting numbers, doesn't state what batch size though
11:07AM EST - batch 1 is latency focused, batch 64+ is throughput focused
11:07AM EST - Sensing hub is 5x more powerful
11:08AM EST - Less than 1 mA current
11:08AM EST - TensorMicro framework for sensor hub
11:08AM EST - Already can offload 38% of the Hey Google algorithm to the sensor hub
11:09AM EST - Sensor hub can operate when rest of the hardware is basically off
11:09AM EST - Hub can now take data from all sensors simultaneously without muxing
11:09AM EST - e.g. matching ring volume to environment
11:09AM EST - Social media filter suggestions by detecting environment
11:10AM EST - This person is clearly on a raid
11:10AM EST - Using AI to detect what sort of moisturizer you should use after the shower
11:11AM EST - (so using a phone in the bathroom, that's going to go down well)
11:11AM EST - 6th Gen On-device SDK
11:12AM EST - Support for new models, and MS W10 use cases powered by snapdragon
11:12AM EST - Hexagon NN direct
11:13AM EST - New Qualcomm AI Engine Direct provides APIs for full SoC access for AI models
11:13AM EST - CPU/GPU/Hexagon all in one
11:13AM EST - Compatible with S865
11:13AM EST - Focused on modularity and extensibility
11:14AM EST - User defined operators in OpenCL into the SDK
11:15AM EST - tvm with now support Hexagon built with python
11:15AM EST - Sharing contributions with the open source community
11:15AM EST - AI model efficiency toolkit
11:15AM EST - New support for lower quantization
11:16AM EST - Allows maximising power while maintaining accuracy
11:16AM EST - Working directly with Snapchat
11:18AM EST - S888. 5nm
11:19AM EST - Kryo 680 + Adreno 660 + Hexagon 780
11:19AM EST - X60 modem, 5G sub-6 and mmWave
11:22AM EST - S888 improves your experiences, and creates new ones
11:22AM EST - Redefining the premium tier
11:23AM EST - That's a wrap. Next year's event is in Hawaii
13 Comments
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Luminar - Wednesday, December 2, 2020 - link
Qualcomm should just license Apple's M1 chip.Ian Cutress - Wednesday, December 2, 2020 - link
Apple doesn't license its chips to anyone. Nor sell it for use in anyone else's systems. What you're proposing would be a fundamental change to Apple's business model.Luminar - Wednesday, December 2, 2020 - link
Qualcomm should just move to China and steal Apple's IP, then. This would be a win-win situation, as Qualcomm would face 0 legal repercussions while enabling much more efficient and faster chips in the mobile sector.mode_13h - Wednesday, December 2, 2020 - link
Speaking of licensing, I'd imagine Qualcomm is probably doing some contingency planning to deal with the potential for unfavorable licensing terms by Nvidia -- ARM's new master.For one thing, it'll be interesting to see what happens with Adreno, now that the supplier of Snapdragons' CPU cores is chock-full of GPU IP (both Mali and Nvidia's own designs). Either Qualcomm could drop Adreno and just license their GPUs as well, or maybe sever ties with ARM entirely and switch to something like RISC V CPU cores, if there would be an implementation with competitive performance and efficiency. Staying the present course would probably lead them to be less and less competitive with other SoCs that simply license all their IP from ARM/Nvidia.
Raqia - Wednesday, December 2, 2020 - link
They still lead per watt for GPUs. Neither nVidia nor AMD can produce anything as efficient. Drivers are another story...Raqia - Wednesday, December 2, 2020 - link
New hypervisor portends Windows on ARM on phones... who needs that fat desktop or even a NUC now?!iphonebestgamephone - Wednesday, December 2, 2020 - link
Noone, qualcomm best.name99 - Wednesday, December 2, 2020 - link
Anyone who wants multiple windows, even multiple screens? Or a keyboard? Or multiple IO devices?This insistence that PCs are going away some time soon is so silly. The guts can (and will, and have [Apple...] changed) but the human body hasn't, meaning the PC will remain in conformance with the human body as the device that gives you lots of physically bigger stuff (like screen, like full sized keyboard), like lots of ports.
Luminar - Thursday, December 3, 2020 - link
USBC hub gives you all the ports you can imagine on androidiphonebestgamephone - Thursday, December 3, 2020 - link
That doesnt mean it supports everything, does it?