Qualcomm QCM6490 vs Qualcomm Snapdragon 855+ / 855 Plus

Qualcomm QCM6490

The Qualcomm QCM6490 is an upper mid-range SoC and is based on the Snapdragon 778G, but this variant is an extended-life chipset. The QCM6490 is being used for the first time in the Android smartphone Fairphone 5, but has actually been designed for corporate use and IoT applications.

The Kyro 670 CPU consists of a total of eight cores, which are divided into three clusters. The first cluster consists of just one high-performance core (Kyro Gold Plus, Cortex-A78), which operates at up to 2.71 GHz. The second cluster contains three further Cortex-A78 cores (Kyro Gold), each clocking at up to 2.40 GHz. The remaining four power-saving cores (Kyro Silver, Cortex-A55) are located in the last cluster and operate at up to 1.96 GHz. For the graphics calculations, an Adreno 643 with 812 MHz is integrated.

The QCM6490 SoC has an integrated 5G modem that supports both 5G-Sub6 and 5G-mmWave. In theory, this enables data rates of up to 3.7 Gbit/s downlink and 2.5 Gbit/s upload. Wi-Fi 6E is also on board, which supports the 6 GHz band.

The SoC is manufactured using the 6 nm process.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 855+ / 855 Plus

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 Plus (855+) Mobile Platform is a high-end smartphone and tablet SoC that Qualcomm announced in 2019. Compared to the normal Snapdragon 855, the 855 Plus offers higher clock speeds of the GPU and CPU. The SoC integrates a fast ‘Prime Core’ that clocks up to 2.96 GHz (up from 2.84 GHz in the 855) and three further fast ARM Cortex-A76 performance cores, which can reach up to 2.42 GHz. These are complemented by four power-saving ARM Cortex-A55 cores that clock up to a maximum of 1.8 GHz.

The SoC also integrates the new X24 LTE modem that Qualcomm promises will deliver up to 2 Gbit/s maximum download speed over LTE Cat.20 and up to 316 Mbit/s upload speeds. The Snapdragon 855 can be configured with the company’s new X50 5G modem too.

Qualcomm has also improved the integrated Wi-Fi modem, which is Wi-Fi 6-ready, has 8x8 Sounding and supports up to 802.11 ay Wi-Fi. The Wi-Fi modem can utilise the 60 GHz mmWave band for up to 10 Gbit/s internet speeds.

The Hexagon 690 DSP has undergone the most revisions of that which Qualcomm has integrated into the Snapdragon 855. The new DSP incorporates a neural processing unit (NPU) with dedicated Tensor-cores that can execute up to 7 trillion operations per second in conjunction with the CPU and GPU. In short, the Snapdragon 855 should be three times faster than the Snapdragon 845 and two times faster than the Kirin 980 SoC.

The Snapdragon 855 also has a Spectra 380 ISP onboard, which is the world’s first chip to incorporate a Computer Vision Engine (CV-ISP) that can perform depth calculations in videos at up to 60 FPS. The Snapdragon 855 should deliver real-time portrait modes or be able to detect objects with relatively low power consumption.

The built-in memory controller supports up to 16 GB LPDDR4x RAM (4 x 16-bit). As the SD855, the 855+ integrates an Adreno 640 graphics card that is now higher clocked and should offer a 15% higher performance.

Qualcomm will manufacturer the Snapdragon 855+ at the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) using a 7 nm FinFET process.