Qualcomm Details The Snapdragon 888: 3rd Gen 5G & Cortex-X1 on 5nm
by Andrei Frumusanu on December 2, 2020 10:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Mobile
- Qualcomm
- Smartphones
- SoCs
- 5G
- Cortex A78
- Cortex X1
- Snapdragon 888
Conclusion & First Impressions
The new Snapdragon 888 is overall a very impressive package from Qualcomm, advancing the most important areas for which today’s smartphones are being used. 5G connectivity was the big new feature of 2020 SoCs and smartphones, and the new 888 platform represents the evolution and maturing of the new technologies that had been introduced in prior generations.
The big focus point of the Snapdragon 888 were clearly AI and cameras. The new Hexagon 780 IP block looks immensely impressive and to me seems like a major competitive advantage of the new SoC design – other vendors which aren’t as vertically integrated with their accelerator IPs will have to respond to Qualcomm’s new advancements as it seems like a major performance advantage that will be hard to mimic.
Today’s flagship smartphones have diminished ways of differentiating themselves from one another, with the cameras still being the one aspect where vendors still have very different approaches to their designs. Qualcomm’s push for a triple-ISP system in the Snapdragon 888 pushes the upper limits of what vendors will be able to do on their smartphones, allowing for a continued push for the smartphone camera ecosystem. Even for still-picture camera experiences, it seems that Qualcomm is expecting a more notable technology jump in 2021 as we see the introduction of new sensors and imaging techniques, enabled by the new SoC.
The new CPU configuration gives the new SoC a good uplift in performance, although it’s admittedly less of a jump than I had hoped for this generation of Cortex-X1 designs, and I do think Qualcomm won’t be able to retain the performance crown for this generation of Android-SoCs, with the performance gap against Apple’s SoCs also narrowing less than we had hoped for.
On the GPU side, the new 35% performance uplift is extremely impressive. If Qualcomm is really able to maintain similar power figures this generation, it should allow the Snapdragon 888 to retake the performance crown in mobile, and actually retain it for the majority of 2021.
The new Snapdragon 888 to me looks like a continuation of Qualcomm’s excellent execution over the last few years. Striking a balance between performance, power efficiency, and features is something that may be harder than it sounds, and Qualcomm’s engineering teams here seem to be focused on being able to deliver the overall best package.
Much like the Snapdragon 865, and the last couple of generations of Snapdragon SoCs before it, I expect the new Snapdragon 888 to be an excellent foundation for 2021’s flagship devices, and I’m looking forward to experience the new generation.
Related Reading:
- Qualcomm Tech Summit 2020: Day One LiveBlog (10:00 ET, 15:00 UTC)
- Qualcomm’s New 3rd Generation Snapdragon X60 5G Modem, Built on 5nm
- Qualcomm Announces Snapdragon 865+: Breaking the 3GHz Threshold
- The Snapdragon 865 Performance Preview: Setting the Stage for Flagship Android 2020
- Qualcomm Announces Snapdragon 865 and 765(G): 5G For All in 2020, All The Details
- The Snapdragon 855 Performance Preview: Setting the Stage for Flagship Android 2019
- The Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 Pre-Dive: Going Into Detail on 2019's Flagship Android SoC
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powermacg5@ - Thursday, December 3, 2020 - link
Hello everyone. Excuse my ignorance. Difference between 11 Apple A14 AI teraflops and 26 teraflops AI Snapdragon 888. Even the 865, seems to have more teraflops than the A13, but I can't quite understand the difference in normal use. It does not seem to me that the various terminals that use Snapdragon, make great use of AI.The Hardcard - Thursday, December 3, 2020 - link
AI bragging usually involves integer operations as they work for inference and ALUs of all types can do more of them than floating points. So TOPS, not teraflops.I don’t know if the full comparison is available because Qualcomm’s figure includes every unit on the SOC without breaking down how many are from CPU, how many from GPU, and how many are Hexagon.
Apple’s figure is just from the Neural Engine. They use their GPU, but I haven’t seen them give a public figure. The also brag about putting matrix accelerators in the CPU (big cores only?) but don’t get into how many TOPS the whole SOC can do. Maybe it’s in the developer docs?
techconc - Thursday, December 3, 2020 - link
It's important to note that these "TOPS" ratings are marketing driven and not an Apples to Apples comparison. Apple advertises the speed of their Neural Engine only (11 TOPS). Qualcomm's advertised TOPs number represents the theoretical capacity of ALL of their computing units including CPU, GPU, DSP, etc. Apple's number would be much higher as well if they included all of those other things not to mention their dedicated matrix multiplication units, etc.powermacg5@ - Thursday, December 3, 2020 - link
Hello everyone. Excuse my ignorance. Difference between 11 Apple A14 AI teraflops and 26 teraflops AI Snapdragon 888. Even the 865, seems to have more teraflops than the A13, but I can't quite understand the difference in normal use. It does not seem to me that the various terminals that use Snapdragon, make great use of AI.iphonebestgamephone - Thursday, December 3, 2020 - link
Better data gathering.Anymoore - Thursday, December 3, 2020 - link
Qualcomm mentioned "most advanced 5nm", that's not Samsung, especially not LPEarly version of it.kwinz - Thursday, December 3, 2020 - link
Thats disappointing. Especially no AV1 hardware decode.techconc - Thursday, December 3, 2020 - link
"Another rationale for the foundry switch could be manufacturing capacity. As Apple is eating up a lot of TSMC’s early 5nm capacity with the A14 and M1, Qualcomm probably saw Samsung’s 5LPE as the safer choice this year..."This is the most likely scenario and justification to move to Samsung.
techconc - Thursday, December 3, 2020 - link
"One interesting capability that Qualcomm was advertising is triple-stream 4K HDR video recording. That’s a bit of an odd-ball use-case as I do wonder about the practical benefits..."Nothing oddball about it. Apple's A13 has this capability as well. There are pro apps like Filmic Pro which allow you to do things like capture a documentary type of interview on multiple cams at the same time. It may be something of an edge case, but it can be useful. It makes sense that Android phones start to get some parity on this type of feature.
Plumplum - Saturday, December 5, 2020 - link
Many things on this 888 are old...About this triple stream 4k HDR, not only Mediatek Dimensity 1000 has it, but 820 and 800 have it too...
We can notice the 3 ISP too...avaiblable since...Helio P60...even Unisoc has soc with 3 ISP!
If market wasn't ruled by Qualcomm, we would already have zooming capabilities across 3 cameras for a long time like Apple does.
Still no AV1 hardware support...Qualcomm want us to pay licences for mpeg5!
At least 888 is able to do 5g carrier aggregation. 865 wasn't...it means, until mmwave will be available in many years, in many countries, even a Dimensity 700 would be able to reach faster 5g speed than 865.
Plus 5nm from Samsung, not that much better than TSMC's 7nm.
TSMC's 7FF : 96.5Mtransistors/mm2
TSMC's 7FFP : 113.9
Samsung 5LPE : 126.5
TSMC's N5 : 173.1
Efficiency won't be as good on 5LPE!