Qualcomm Snapdragon 630 vs Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 MSM8974AB vs Qualcomm Snapdragon 439

Qualcomm Snapdragon 630

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.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 MSM8974AB

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 MSM8974AB 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 2.36 GHz, the chip also integrates an Adreno 330 GPU up to 578 MHz, an LPDDR3-1866 memory controller and various radio modules (UMTS/LTE, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS). The slightly higher CPU/GPU clocks and faster memory support are the key differences to the Snapdragon 800 MSM8974.

Processor 

The CPU portion is based on Qualcomm's Krait architecture, which is compatible with the ARMv7 ISA. Compared to the Snapdragon 600 (Krait 300), the new Krait 400 cores of the Snapdragon 800/801 have been tweaked just slightly with faster L2 cache. Thanks to a clock rate of up to 2.36 GHz and a high performance per MHz somewhere between an ARM Cortex-A9 and a Cortex-A15, the Snapdragon 801 offers very strong CPU performance. The S801 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 800/801 is the graphics unit. While the S600 implements an Adreno 320 (400 to 450 MHz), the S800 /S801 feature the faster Adreno 330 (MSM8974AB: 578 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.

Features 

Furthermore, the MSM8974AB supports many wireless technologies: Bluetooth 4.0, WLAN, IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n/ac (2.4/5 GHz), GSM (GPRS, EDGE), W-CDMA/UMTS (HSDPA, HSUPA, HSPA+, cat.29 DC-HSPA+), MBMS, cat.4 LTE, CDMA2000 (1X RTT, 1 × EV-DO Rel.0/Rev.A/Rev.B, 1× EV-DO Rev.A MC, 1× Adv Rev.A/Rev.B) and TD-SCDMA. 

The MSM8974AB can encode and play UHD 4K videos in 3840x2160 at 30 FPS (120 Mbps H.264 High Profile) simultaneously 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. However, the MSM8974AB will likely to need a little more power than the slightly lower clocked MSM8974.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 439

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 439 (SD439) is a lower mainstream SoC for (Android based) smartphones and tablets. Compared to the older Snapdragon 435, the 439 is now manufactured in the current 12nm FinFET process and offers higher clock speeds of 2 GHz of the eight ARM Cortex-A53 cores (compared to 1.4 GHz). Wifi (now ac Wave 2 / Wifi 5) and Bluetooth (v5) were also updated, however the GPU still is the rather slow Adreno 505 and the LTE modem was even downgraded to a X6 with only Cat. 4/5 (max. 150 Mbps download, 75 Mbps upload).

Thanks to the higher maximum clock speed, the performance of the Snapdragon 439 mobile platform can reach the old Snapdragon 625 (also 2 GHz with 8x Cortex-A53). However, there is still a big gap to the SoCs with bigger performance cores.