As you might have already heard, the biggest chip maker in the world has recently announced its newest flagship processor, the Snapdragon 845, which will likely feature in a majority of high end smartphone devices next year. It goes without saying that Qualcomm’s latest chip offering is expected to introduce a few improvements over this year’s Snapdragon 835, particularly in the areas of battery power efficiency and processing speed and performance. The company, however, is quick to point out that the Snapdragon 845 will be delivering more in certain other key aspects.
Processing Performance
In terms of overall processing prowess, how fast is the Snapdragon 845? Per Qualcomm’s estimations, somewhere between 25 to 30 percent compared to this year’s Snapdragon 835. Like its predecessor, the Snapdragon 845 adopts an architecture made up of four cores, but this time around, they are made much faster and more efficient, able to achieve as high as 2.8 GigaHertz clock speed, with efficiency modules hitting 1.8 GigaHertz. Moreover, the upcoming flagship chip uses up 30 percent less power than the Snapdragon 835.
Artificial Intelligence
We are now entering into an era wherein artificial intelligence (AI) will play a bigger role in our daily lives, and tech companies such as Qualcomm will help usher in that future. Its Snapdragon 845 represents the chip giant’s third generation mobile AI platform (started with the Snapdragon 820, released last year), and the focus is optimizing more than one core. By next year, developers can choose between the Kryo central processing unit (CPU), the graphics processor unit (GPU), and the Hexagon 685 digital signal processor (DSP). With optimizations properly distributed, AI tasks can be achieved three times as faster than on the Snapdragon 835.
Reinforcing Security
Over the last few years, mobile security has become an increasing priority for mobile users and phone makers. To help in preventing hackers from taking full advantage of flaws in security architecture, Qualcomm has incorporated a secure processing unit (SPU) on the Snapdragon 845. This SPU comes with its own chip, random number generator, storage, and power source in order to fend off attacks. Apart from protecting the user’s biometric data, the SPU itself serves as a third layer of security in addition to the couple of current layers already in place.
Imaging and Video Processing
In mobile photography, outdoing the competition in terms of resolution has been the focus for so many years. The Snapdragon 845, however, will employ another approach -- instead of resolution, it will put more attention to gathering as much color information it can get. Via the Spectra ISP, Qualcomm’s newest chip collects massive color volume through three different methods -- shifting from 8 bit to 10 bit color, broadening the color gamut from Rec 709 to Rec 2020, and raising the brightness (luminance up to 10,000 nits).
Connectivity
Building on its predecessor’s gigabit LTE capabilities, the Snapdragon 845 will make full use of Qualcomm’s X20, its next gen gigabit LTE modem. X20 will allow for increases in connection speeds by 20 percent, as compared to the Snapdragon 835’s X16 modem.
