The much-anticipated TSMC 4nm process Snapdragon 8+ processor finally officially debuted at the 2022 Snapdragon Night tonight.
Compared with the Snapdragon 8 of Samsung’s 4nm process released in December last year, the CPU frequency of the super core of the Snapdragon 8+ can reach up to 3.2GHz (the maximum frequency of the Snapdragon 8 is 3GHz), the multi-core performance is improved by 10%, and the GPU frequency is higher than that of the Snapdragon 8+. Dragon 8 is also increased by 10%.
More interesting is the power consumption level of the Snapdragon 8+. According to the data given by Qualcomm, the CPU and GPU energy efficiency of the Snapdragon 8+ has a decrease of up to 30% compared with the Snapdragon 8, and the overall power consumption of the SoC is decreased by 15%.
In addition, the Snapdragon 7 was also unveiled at the Qualcomm Snapdragon Friends Night tonight. Different from the benchmarking role of the Snapdragon 8+, the Snapdragon 7 series has larger shipments and has more practical value for Qualcomm in the high-end market.
With the release of new products, the competition between Qualcomm and MediaTek in the flagship and high-end 5G SoC market has escalated again. It seems that Qualcomm is running out of time for MediaTek to seize the high-end and flagship market.
Is the Snapdragon 8+ still “hot”?
Starting with the Snapdragon 855, Qualcomm’s flagship products first launched a new generation of products in December of that year, and then launched the Plus version about half a year later. The Plus version will have a certain degree of improvement in performance and further enhance product features.
Therefore, the launch of Snapdragon 8+ is not unexpected. However, in recent years, the heating problem of Snapdragon flagship mobile phone processors has caused dissatisfaction among a large number of consumers, and consumers are expecting Qualcomm to solve the heating problem of flagship processors.
To solve the heating problem of mobile phone SoC, there are two ways, using a larger chip area or a more advanced manufacturing process.
For Qualcomm, a simpler and more effective method is to use the most advanced technology of TSMC. The industry generally believes that Samsung’s process is the key to Qualcomm’s difficult to suppress the power consumption of Qualcomm’s flagship mobile phone SoC in recent generations, which also makes TSMC’s version of Qualcomm’s flagship processor highly anticipated.
The Snapdragon 8+ adopts TSMC’s 4nm process, and still adopts the architecture design of one Cortex-X2 performance super core, three Cortex-A710 large cores and four Cortex-A510 small cores. The main frequency of the performance super core is increased to 3.2GHz, and the multi-core 10% performance improvement.
For comparison, the Snapdragon 8 CPU frequency of Samsung’s 4nm process is 3.0GHz+2.5GHz+1.8GHz. The frequency of Snapdragon 8+ is increased by 6.7%, 10% and 12.2% respectively. The MediaTek Dimensity 9000 frequency of TSMC’s 4nm process is 3.05GHz+2.85GHz+1.8GHz. The frequencies of the Snapdragon 8+ are 5%, -3.5%, and 12.2% higher, respectively.
The GPU performance of the Snapdragon 8+ is more worth looking forward to. The GPU frequency of the Snapdragon 8+ is 10% higher than that of the Snapdragon 8, and the power consumption is reduced by up to 30%. From the official test data, it can be seen that the GPU performance of the Snapdragon 8+ is very strong.
Qualcomm is also working with game development teams to further optimize game performance. The “Genshin Impact” game can be continuously tested for 1 hour at an ambient temperature of 25 degrees Celsius with 810P image quality, and can maintain an average frame rate of 60.2, which is 30% lower than that of the Snapdragon 8 in the same environment.
If you are running “Honor of Kings”, whether it is the ultimate picture quality of 90 frames or the high-definition picture quality of 120 frames, the energy efficiency of the Snapdragon 8+ is about 30% higher than that of the Snapdragon 8.
That is to say, if it is a heavy gamer, a 30% increase in energy efficiency will significantly improve the game experience.
In addition to the energy efficiency improvements of the CPU and GPU, the AI energy efficiency of the Snapdragon 8+ has increased by 20%.
From the perspective of the entire SoC, the Snapdragon 8+ has a power consumption reduction of about 15% compared to the Snapdragon 8, and the data is very eye-catching. As for the actual user experience, we need to wait for the flagship phone of the Snapdragon 8+ to have a more intuitive experience. Xiaomi will launch the Snapdragon 8+ processor for the first time.
Regarding power consumption, Ma Xiaomin, senior director of product marketing at Qualcomm Technologies, pointed out, “Chip design is a relatively complex system engineering, not just the optimization of a certain module itself. To make the overall power consumption of SoC have obvious advantages, there are several important Dimensions, including process selection, continuous optimization of hardware IP, power supply design and software scheduling.”
Snapdragon 7, the key to Qualcomm’s high-end market position
Only a small number of consumers can be reached by the Snapdragon 8+, and the users that the Snapdragon 7 can reach will be more extensive.
It can be seen from the naming that the Snapdragon 7 is the follow-up product of the Snapdragon 778G, and of course it is also a product of the Snapdragon 8 technology.
There are three firsts on the Snapdragon 7. The first is the first 7-series platform to support the seventh-generation Qualcomm AI engine. For example, in the scene of deep learning face detection, compared with the previous generation Snapdragon 778G, the detection accuracy of the Snapdragon 7 can be improved by 25%. The area required for recognition is reduced from the original 25 × 25 pixels to 20 × 20 pixels, and it can detect up to 300 facial feature points, with the same ability as the Snapdragon 8.
For the second time, the Snapdragon 7 is also the first 7-series platform to support 200 million pixel shooting. It is built on a 14-bit triple ISP and can support single-frame progressive HDR features. Compared with the previous generation of Snapdragon in terms of picture quality 778G has a significant improvement.
For the third time, for the first time, the Snapdragon 7 sinks features such as the Qualcomm Trust Management Engine supported by the Snapdragon 8 to the 7-series platform. It has also passed the Android Ready SE certification and can provide vault-level security features.
As for the configuration and performance, Leifeng.com learned that the Snapdragon 7 uses Samsung’s 4nm process. The CPU architecture is a 2.4GHz A710 super core, three 2.36GHz A710 large cores, and four 1.8GHz cores. A510 small core. The GPU performance of the Snapdragon 7 is 20% higher than that of the Snapdragon 778G, and it supports some Snapdragon Elite Gaming features, including the Qualcomm Adreno image motion engine, which is a GPU-based frame prediction technology that can save half the power at the same frame rate. power consumption, or provide a higher frame rate with the same power consumption. It also supports Game Quick Touch, the game touch response speed is more than 20% higher than that of the Snapdragon 778G, and supports variable resolution rendering.
In terms of connection performance, the Snapdragon 7 integrates the 7-series platform of the Snapdragon X62 5G modem and radio frequency system that conforms to the Release16 standard. The maximum downlink rate reaches 4.4Gbps, which is a significant improvement over the previous generation Snapdragon 778G, and can also support 5G+5G. Dual SIM dual access. Wi-Fi has been upgraded from the previous generation FastConnect 6700 to FastConnect 6900, which can provide faster and ultra-low latency Wi-Fi connections.
The competitor of the Snapdragon 7 is the Dimensity 8000 series, and the frontal competition between the two will also start in the next month or two. OPPO Reno8 Pro will be the first to launch the Snapdragon 7 processor.
Not much time left for MediaTek
Entering the 5G era, MediaTek has made great progress all the way, out of stock, and the superposition of Samsung’s manufacturing process, giving MediaTek the opportunity to hit the flagship market again.
Strategy Analytics predicts that flagship phones will account for about 31% of the global market in 2022 and 35% in 2027. In addition, by 2027, the market share of high-end mobile phones will reach 17%, and flagship mobile phones will account for more than 50% of the entire mobile phone market.
All along, Qualcomm has a clear advantage in the high-end and flagship markets. Qualcomm’s market share in the smartphone market above $500 will increase from 41% in 2020 to 55% in 2021.
2022 is a critical year for the mobile phone market. Affected by the epidemic, global smartphone shipments in 2020 will drop by 11.7% year-on-year compared with 2019. Counterpoint expects that the global smartphone market is expected to return to the state of 2019 by the end of this year.
Changes in the mobile phone market, coupled with the release of TSMC’s 4nm Snapdragon 8+, left the window for MediaTek to hit the flagship market getting smaller and smaller. As for the high-end market, it depends on the competition between Snapdragon 7 and Dimensity 8000.
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