Snapdragon 835, The Processor for 2017 Flagships

The world’s largest chip manufacturer announces their processor that will power 2017’s smartphones.

Towards the end of last year, Qualcomm announced that it’s next prime jewel was going to be the Snapdragon 835. It also said that it’s new, next-generation smartphone processor chip would be built using 10nm FinFET process node in collaboration with Samsung. But that’s where the details halted and nothing else was made known to the world.

That announcement had it’s effect — curiosity and conjecture ensued, mulling the whats and hows of the Snapdragon 835 processor.

Then, at the recently concluded CES 2017 event, amid the unveiling of a lot of new cool gadgets, Qualcomm announced more details about the Snapdragon 835.

The company dwelled on some details regarding the forthcoming chip, shedding light on the clock speeds, core designs and upgrades on top of Snapdragon 820.

The official word is that the Snapdragon 835 will feature the Kryo 280 CPU with four performance cores running at up to 2.45 GHz and four efficiency cores running up to 1.9 GHz. The newest chip will feature LPDRR4X (a type of LPDDR4 developed by Samsung that uses 0.6V for I/O voltage (Vddq) instead of the standard 1.1V.

“The combination of the CPU, GPU, DSP and software framework support in the Snapdragon 835 offers a highly-capable heterogeneous compute platform,” the company said in a release.

In terms of connectivity, the Snapdragon 835 processor comes with “an integrated X16 Gigabit-Class LTE modem, with integrated 2x2 802.11ac Wave-2 and 802.11ad Multi-gigabit Wi-Fi, making it the first commercial processor equipped to deliver Gigabit-Class connectivity at home and on the go,” Qualcomm said.

To provide you with some concrete figures, the processor is claimed to offer 20% performance gain, and 25% faster graphics rendering.

The hardware-based user authentication on this new chip makes the smartphone eligible for uses like enterprise access, users’ personal data and mobile payments which are the need of the hour, all thanks to Demonetisation (in India).

The Snapdragon 835 is clearly aimed at supporting next-generation entertainment experiences and connected Cloud services for premium consumer and enterprise devices, including smartphones, VR/AR head-mounted displays, IP cameras, tablets, mobile PCs and other devices running a variety of operating systems, smartphones, VR/AR head-mounted displays, IP cameras, tablets, mobile PCs and other devices running a variety of operating systems, including Android and Windows 10, with support for legacy Win32 apps.

“Our new flagship Snapdragon processor is designed to meet the demanding requirements of mobile virtual reality and ubiquitous connectivity while supporting a variety of thin and light mobile designs,” said Cristiano Amon, Executive Vice President, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., in a statement.

The Snapdragon 835 also incorporates the new Adreno 540 GPU and Qualcomm Spectra 180 image sensor processor (ISP), taking your travel photography game to the next level with its amazing camera capabilities. This latest Qualcomm flagship processor can support up to 32-megapixel single and 16-megapixel dual-camera setups.

What’s more, the Snapdragon 835 is packed with Quick Charge 4 that can fill juice in the device for up to 20% faster charging and up to 30% higher efficiency than Quick Charge 3.0.

This clearly implies that the users can play more games and watch movies for a longer period of time on their smartphone without worrying about the battery. Additionally, there is word that the mobile platform has been shrunk and is 35% smaller in package size, thereby consuming 25% less power in comparison to its predecessor, which means longer battery life and thinner designs.

The improved performance on the newest chip is owed to the gains in the clock speed and not really any crucial micro-architectural changes. Most of us are aware of the fact that smartphones rarely run at their top frequencies for any length of time due to aggressive power management. If the new 10 nm chip is able to hold higher clock speeds than its 14nm predecessor, then it can definitely lead to better results in terms of performance.

This kind of rise fails to be prominent at times, simply because thermal and power envelopes limit their applicability to specific applications or workloads, and because efficiency improvements have naturally diminishing returns.

In addition to providing details about their latest processor, Qualcomm, in partnership with ODG, also launched the first devices powered by the Snapdragon 835 processor — ODG R-8 and R-9 AR/ VR smartglasses.

The processor is expected to be shipped in commercial devices in the first half of 2017, in fact some rumours suggest that Samsung Galaxy S8 might pack in this latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor.

I know that was a lot of technalese back there, but it’s hard to talk English when you one’s listing specs! Check back at chip-monks.com to know more as 2017 unfolds, and devices bearing this new benchmark of processing power, release to the world at large.

Originally published at Chip-Monks.