Qualcomm Snapdragon 636 vs Qualcomm Snapdragon 616 MSM8939v2 vs Qualcomm Snapdragon 665

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).

Qualcomm Snapdragon 616 MSM8939v2

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 616 MSM8939v2 is a mid-range ARMv8-based SoC largely for Android tablets and smartphones. Announced in February 2014, the S616 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 (power saving cluster max. 1.2 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 616 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 1.2 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 most likely). 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 616 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 616 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.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 665

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 665 (SM6125) is a fast mid-range ARM-based SoC largely found on Android tablets and smartphones. It features 8 Kryo 260 cores (custom design, 64-Bit capable) that are divided in two clusters. A fast cluster of four cores with up to 2 GHz (Kryo 260 Gold - Cortex-A73 derivate) and a power saving efficiency cluster with up to 1.8 GHz (Kryo 260 Silver - Cortex A53 derivate). Both clusters can also be used together.

In addition to the 8 CPU cores, the SoC integrates a mid range Adreno 610 GPU with a LPDDR4 memory controller (dual-channel)  and supports Wi-Fi (802.11ac + MIMO, max. 867 Mbps), Bluetooth 5, and LTE (X12 LTE modem with up to 600 Mbps download and 150 Mbps upload).

Power Consumption

Thanks to the new 11 nm LPP process, the energy efficiency should be quite good.