Qualcomm Snapdragon 860 vs MediaTek Dimensity 1080

Qualcomm Snapdragon 860

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 860 (SM8150-AC) Mobile Platform is a high-end smartphone and tablet SoC that Qualcomm announced in 2021. Compared to the old Snapdragon 855 Plus, the 860 is very similar and adds support for 16 GB RAM and a few camera features.

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 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 860 can be configured with the company’s new X50 5G modem too (as an external chip).

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 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 860 should be three times faster than the Snapdragon 845 and two times faster than the Kirin 980 SoC.

The Snapdragon 860 also has a Spectra 380 ISP onboard, which was the world’s first part to incorporate a Computer Vision Engine (CV-ISP) that can perform depth calculations in videos at up to 60 FPS. The Snapdragon 860 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 and 855+, the 860 integrates an Adreno 640 graphics card.

Qualcomm will manufacturer the Snapdragon 860 at the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) using a 7 nm FinFET process. 

MediaTek Dimensity 1080

The Mediatek Dimensity 1080 is a mid-range ARM SoC (system-on-a-chip) that can be used in both smartphones and tablets (mainly Android). The SoC integrates two ARM Cortex-A78 cores with up to 2.6 GHz for demanding tasks and six power-saving ARM Cortex-A55 cores with clock rates of up to 2 GHz.

The chip has an integrated sub-6 GHz 5G modem including dual-SIM support that can reach a maximum download speed of up to 2.77 Gbit/s. Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) is supported as well as Bluetooth 5.2.;

The memory controller copes with LPDDR4x or LPDDR5 working memory as well as UFS 3.1 mass storage. As an integrated graphics card, the SoC uses the ARM Mali-G68 MC4, which supports displays with 120 Hz as well as HDR10+ at a maximum resolution of 2,520 x 1,440 pixels.

The differences to the Dimensity 920 are minor, only the slightly higher maximum clock and a support for higher-resolution cameras can be found.

The MediaTek Dimensity 1080 is still manufactured in 6 nm.