Qualcomm Snapdragon Summit Summary
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So I was lucky enough to be invited to this years Qualcomm Snapdragon Tech Summit in Hawaii. It was an epic event with lots of epic announcements. So without further ado allow me to summarize all the tech that was unleashed. (Interesting story when I arrived VLOG)
The SUPER Snapdragon 855 is unleashed
So firstly Qualcomm announced the all-new Super Snapdragon 855 processor. The worlds 1st 5G capable smartphone silicon built using a 7nm process…what does this mean for you?
Putting it simply the 7nm manufacture process allows Qualcomm to cram more processing POWER into the tiny but mighty 'Super' Snapdragon 855.
So expect it Snapdragon 855 chip to be more powerful & more energy efficient than [Qualcomm's Snapdragon 845]
In fact, you can switch out Qualcomm's Snapdragon 845 with any other mobile phone processor currently on the market in the above sentence and it would still be true.
The new 'Super' Snapdragon 855’s 7nm architecture allows it to perform twice as fast as Qualcomm's 7nm competitors. If you don't know who what I'm talking about. Let us not beat around the bush, let me just tell you.
Qualcomm claim that SD855 is actually 2 times faster Apples A12 bionic & 2 times faster than Huawei's Kirin 980, and on top of that the Snapdragon 855 is the world’s first 7nm chip to support 5G.
Yes, that's right I said it. The Qualcomm SD855 is twice a fast, and is the 1st to support 5G.
The Qualcomm Kryo CPU inside the Super Snapdragon is actually 45% faster than Qualcomm's 2018 Snapdragon 845 chip, and that's not all, the graphics processing has also improved by 20% with the all-new Qualcomm Adreno 640.
So this means even more mobile gaming power in 2019. Qualcomm believes these gaming performance improvements are so significant they've decided to give it a name. They call it 'Qualcomm ELITE GAMING' Let me explain why.
To reinforce the improved Adreno 640 GPU, Qualcomm's gaming prowess is extended with the addition of the Vulkan 1.1 physical graphics library, but what does that mean for you?
Well, expect to see True HDR rendering while gaming, improved frame rates up to 60fps with more textures. The new Adreno 640 GPU will also have the ability to display up to 8 billion shades of colour.
So imagine if you will, one of this year's Snapdragon 845 dedicated gaming smartphones, plus another 2018 mid-range phone together in one device.
That's the kind of processing power you are going to get with the 'Super' Snapdragon 855. I know it's hard to visualize, but I heard we shall see devices in the wild as early as Q1 2019.
There are also many improvements made that will allow the Super Snapdragon to be more intelligent. If you want to learn more about that check out my WhatGear video.
ALWAYS ON, ALWAYS CONNECTED PC - UPGRADES
On Day 3 another beast was unleashed. A new Qualcomm Compute platform the Snapdragon 8CX. This mighty silicon has been built from the ground up to change the laptop PC game forever.
To start with the new Always on computers will house the Snapdragon 8cx with the all-new X24 LTE modem increasing your 4G speeds up to 2Gbps, doubling speeds that most of us already consider being fast enough. That's not all as Qualcomm have the X50 LTE modem waiting in the wings for when 5G becomes available.
The new architecture makes the Qualcomm SD8cx the worlds 1st 7nm platform in a PC. It will also make one of the most power efficient on the market today.
This groundbreaking chip boasts the biggest leap forward in performance power Qualcomm had ever had in a PC platform. Doubling the performance of last years Snapdragon 850, and doubling the performance of current intel U-Series chips.
When it comes to power efficiency, we could see Always on pc's lasting up to 25Hrs on a single charge, which is 60% more efficient than the SD850. This will vary from device to device depending on the size of batteries the OEM's decide to use.
When it comes to graphics the new Adreno 680 will now support Adobe Photoshop & Lightroom which is great for people like me. It will also support 4K playback to 2 monitors simultaneously which would be especially useful for presentations or even gaming.
The last additions to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx platform that I think is pretty awesome is the addition of Alexa. So if you already have connected home Alexa devices, you're always-on pc can join the family. Last but not least all Snapdragon Always connected PC's will support AptX HD which means Hi-Res audio playback over Bluetooth...sounds good to me!
