The Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 MSM8974 is an ARM-based SoC for tablets and smartphones. It is built at TSMC in a 28nm HPM (High Performance Mobile) HKMG process, whereas the Snapdragon 600 was manufactured in 28nm LP. In addition to 4 CPU cores with a clock speed of up to 2.3 GHz, the chip also integrates an Adreno 330 GPU up to 450 MHz, an LPDDR3-1600 memory controller and various radio modules (UMTS/LTE, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS).
Processor
The CPU portion is based on Qualcomm's Krait architecture, which is compatible with ARMv7 ISA. Compared to the Snapdragon 600 (Krait 300), the new Krait 400 cores of the Snapdragon 800 have been tweaked just slightly with faster L2 cache. Thanks to a clock rate of up to 2.3 GHz and a high performance per MHz somewhere between an ARM Cortex-A9 and a Cortex-A15, the Snapdragon 800 offers very strong CPU performance. The S800 competes with the Nvidia Tegra 4, Samsung Exynos 5420 and Apple A7 and is therefore one of the fastest ARM SoCs on the market as of 2013.
Graphics
Another difference between the Snapdragon 600 and 800 is the graphics unit. While the S600 implements an Adreno 320 (400 to 450 MHz), the S800 features the faster Adreno 330 (450 MHz). Both GPUs offer the same amount of texture units (8 TMUs), but the Adreno 330 has 50 percent more shaders (probably 6x SIMD16 vs. 4x SIMD16 of the previous generation). In conjunction with the higher memory bandwidth, the performance is significantly better. As a result, the Adreno 330 is slightly faster than the Mali-T628 (Exynos 5420) and the PowerVR G6430 (Apple A7). Depending on the device and cooling, however, the performance may vary. The GPU supports OpenGL ES 3.0 as well as OpenCL 1.2.
The MSM8974 can encode and play UHD 4K videos in 3840x2160 at 30 FPS (120 Mbps H.264 High Profile) sumiltaneously via dedicated hardware. Moreover, it supports both USB 2.0 and 3.0 and cameras up to 55 megapixels and stereoscopic 3D.
Power Consumption
Thanks to the new 28nm HPM HKMG process, the energy efficiency has been improved significantly compared to its LP 28nm S600 predecessor. Depending on the field of application, the maximum power consumption should be about 3 W for smartphones or 4 W or greater for tablets. This should be similar to comparable ARM SoCs currently in the market.
The Qualcomm Snapdragon 630 (SDM630) is a mid-range octa-core SoC with eight ARM Cortex-A53 CPU cores at up to 2.2 GHz, an Adreno 508 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. The processor performance should similar to the older Snapdragon 626 which offers similar clock speeds. Compared to the 626, the 630 however supports faster memory and offers faster LTE, Wifi and Bluetooth standards.
The Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 MSM8939 is a mid-range ARMv8-based SoC largely for Android tablets and smartphones. Announced in February 2014, the S615 is one of the first 64-bit capable SoCs from Qualcomm. In addition to 8 Cortex-A53 CPU cores at up to 1.7 GHz, the SoC integrates an Adreno 405 GPU with a 2x 32-bit memory controller (LPDDR3-1600, 12.8 GB/s) and supports Wi-Fi (802.11ac), Bluetooth 4.0, UMTS, and LTE.
CPU
The Cortex-A53 is the successor to the very popular Cortex-A7 design. In addition to the new 64-bit capable ARMv8 ISA, the cores offer a variety of other improvements such as better branch prediction. This leads to a significantly higher performance per clock, which is even above the older Cortex-A9.
The eight cores of the Snapdragon 615 are divided into two quad-core clusters, each optimized for a different operating point. While one cluster can clock up to 1.7 GHz to handle more demanding applications, the other cluster is limited to a maximum of 1.0 GHz for energy-saving purposes. All eight cores can be active at the same time, although most applications aren't parallelized to support 8 cores efficiently.
Overall, the Snapdragon 615 offers a performance similar to that of the older Snapdragon 600 (Krait architecture).
GPU
Another new feature is the integrated graphics unit named Adreno 405 (550 MHz). The Adreno 400 series has been substantially redesigned and supports DirectX 11.2 (FL 11_1) including hardware tessellation, OpenGL ES 3.1, and OpenCL 1.2. Furthermore, the performance has been significantly improved, which is now similar to the Adreno 320 and PowerVR G6200.
Features
The Snapdragon 615 offers numerous wireless technologies such as Bluetooth 4.0 and WLAN 802.11a/b/g/n/ac as well as a Multi-SIM cellular modem supporting LTE cat. 4 (up to 150 Mbps), WCDMA, CDMA, EV-DO, TD-SCDMA and GSM/EDGE.
The SoC can encode and decode 1080p videos using dedicated hardware and stream content to displays with up to 2560 x 2048 pixels. A large number of video codecs including H.265 (playback only) will be supported. The camera ISP can handle sensors with up to 21 MP.
Power Consumption
The Snapdragon 615 is manufactured by TSMC in a 28 nm LP process. According to the specifications, we expect a medium or medium-high power consumption for use in medium-sized or larger smartphones and tablets.
Average Benchmarks Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 MSM8974 → 100%n=16
Average Benchmarks Qualcomm Snapdragon 630 → 125%n=16
Average Benchmarks Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 MSM8939 → 84%n=16
- Range of benchmark values for this graphics card - Average benchmark values for this graphics card * Smaller numbers mean a higher performance 1 This benchmark is not used for the average calculation
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