Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 MSM8976 vs Qualcomm Snapdragon 636

Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 MSM8976

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 (MSM8976, former Snapdragon 620) is an ARM-based mid-range SoC for (Android based) smartphones and tablets. The chip integrates eight CPU cores in two clusters. Four fast ARM Cortex-A72 cores at 1.8 GHz (max.) and four power saving ARM Cortex-A53 cores at 1.2 GHz (max.). In addition to that, the S650 includes a modern Adreno 510 graphics card, 2x 32 Bit LPDDR3-1866 memory controller (14.9 GB/s), an LTE/UMTS radio, and 802.11ac WiFi.

The Cortex-A72 cores are the successor of the Cortex-A57 designs and are based on the ARMv8-ISA (64 Bit). The four slower Cortex-A53 cores are also using the ARMv8-ISA (64 Bit). Both clusters are implemented using the big.LITTLE architecture and therefore all 8 cores can in theory run in parallel to increase performance.

The Snapdragon 652 supports a broad range of wireless standards. Next to WiFi 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.1 and GPS (Qualcomm IZat Gen8C), the 650 supports a range of 2G, 3G and 4G standards like LTE Cat. 7 up to 300 MBit/s.

Dedicated hardware for encoding and decoding of videos (e.g. H.265 4K30, 1080p120) is also supported by the chip.

The Snapdragon 652 is manufactured at TSMC in 28nm (HPm).

Qualcomm Snapdragon 636

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 636 (SDM636) is a mid-range octa-core SoC with eight custom Kryo 260 cores at up to 1.8 GHz, an Adreno 509 GPU, a LPDDR4-2666 memory controller (1333 MHz) and a X12 LTE (Cat 12/13, 300 Mbps down, 150 Mbps up) modem. Furthermore, the chip supports 802.11ac WiFi and Bluetooth 5.0. It is manufactured in 14nm FinFet. Qualcomm states a 40% faster performance compared to the old Snapdragon 630 (8x ARM Cortex-A53).