Snapdragon 888 is the mobile phone processor of Qualcomm Company. On December 1, 2020, at the Snapdragon Technology Summit held in Hawaii, Qualcomm announced the launch of the latest generation of flagship SOC-Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 5G mobile platform and Snapdragon X60 5G baseband.

Ⅰ Introduction

Snapdragon 888 is a big upgrade for Qualcomm's Top 8 Series chipsets in terms of 5G for the first time: unlike the Snapdragon 865, it includes a fully integrated 5G modem.

Snapdragon 888 adopts the Snapdragon X60 modem announced earlier in Qualcomm, which uses a 5nm process to achieve better power efficiency. X60 modem improves 5G carrier aggregation, across millimeter-wave mmWave and frequency spectrum below 6GHz. It supports multi-SIM cards around the world, SA, NSA, and dynamic spectrum sharing. The new processor appears to enhance battery life significantly thanks to its innovative 5nm architecture and integrated modem.

In addition to 5G improvements, Qualcomm also predicts the other progress of Snapdragon 888, including the sixth-generation AI engine and the second generation of sensing hub. The engine is expected to significantly improve the AI task's performance and power economy. According to the business, AI computing capacity has surpassed 26 TOPS. In terms of gaming, Qualcomm will introduce the third-generation Snapdragon Elite Gaming and "Trike Adreno GPU performance, most substantial upgrade," which will offer 144 frames per second.

Finally, Snapdragon 888 has implemented new photography features, including the updated ISP that supports faster billion-pixel processing speed. Users may take images and films at a rate of 2.7 billion pixels per second, which means 120 frames with 12 million pixels each frame are captured every second. According to reports, it is 35 percent faster than the previous version.

Ⅱ Specifications

The Snapdragon 888 is built using Samsung's 5nm technology. 1 x 2.84GHz (ARM's newest Cortex X1 core) + 3 x 2.4GHz (Cortex A78) + 4 x 1.8GHz are used in the CPU (Cortex A55). GPU is Adreno 660. MODEM baseband is X60 5G and supports WiFi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2. 

CPU

The 888 is the first chip (based on an ARM foundation architecture) to use a Cortex-X1 kernel (ARM foundation design has some high pass adjustments). Compared to A78, each X1 clock can perform 33% more of the instructions, and the SIMD hardware is doubled, and the capacity of L1 and L2 caching has doubled. The Cortex-X1 core running frequency is 2.84GHz.

Snapdragon 888 CPU new architecture diagram

Next is a cluster of three Cortex-A78 cores, the clock frequency is 2.4GHz. There are also 4 A55 cores run in 1.8GHz. The CPU is also equipped with 4MB L3 cache and 3MB system cache.

Overall, the Kryo 680 CPU promised to boost the Snapdragon 865 chipset's processor performance by 25%.

GPU

The goal of Adreno 660 is to increase rendering performance by 35% and to increase energy efficiency by 20%. It's made for games with high frame rates and low latency. The goal is to get the required game to run at 144 frames per second, but there are also certain features to improve visual quality.

Cortex-X1

NVIDIA and AMD (including PS5 and Xbox Series X GPUs) have recently developed a new approach called variable rate coloring (VRS). Shaders can now work on two or four pixels at once, rather than just one. This saves computing resources. The rendered image will not be distinguishable if the game creator is attentive. VRS has been shown to improve performance by 30%. Furthermore, it can be utilized to improve power efficiency.

Fast touch in games can reduce touch delay by up to 20%. This works at up to 120 frames per second, but it works best at 60 frames per second, thus any game can be used, even if it doesn't support higher frame rates.

10-bit HDR and sub-pixel rendering are supported by the Adreno 660. Mura compensation can also help to increase the uniformity of the OLED display ("mura" or "clouding" is nesting pixel calibration).

Camera

Snapdragon 888 is the first three ISP Snapdragon chips (the previous series chip is dual ISP). There are multiple uses for this because it can handle three distinct camera flows at the same time. For starters, it can support three 4K HDR video streams or three 28 million pixels.

3 ISP

Because each camera has its own ISP, the transition from an ultra-wide camera to a wide camera to a long-distance camera will be smoother. When the phone switches between the video streams, the prior three cameras / two ISP design causes a "jump."

The three ISPs of the SPECTRA 580 are also used for interleaving HDR because they can process short, medium, and long exposure at the same time. In addition to the 10-bit HDR photos of the HEIF image format, Snapdragon 888 can also record HDR video functions of the previous generation (Snapdragon 865 supports HDR10 + and support Dolby Video Video).

When it comes to video recording, the new chipset can capture and play 4K films at 120 frames per second, allowing it to take advantage of high-resolution 4K monitors. Returning to photography, the chip can capture 120 images at a resolution of 12 million pixels. 

Connectivity

The Snapdragon 888 chipset is the first to use Qualcomm's Snapdragon X60 5G modem. Unlike the Snapdragon 865, the modem is built within the device rather than being an external chip. SUB-6 below 5G and MMWAVE millimeter waves are supported by this third-generation modem. It has a downstream speed of up to 7.5 Gbps and an upstream speed of up to 3 Gbps.

The FastConnect 6900 system, according to Qualcomm, uses Wi-Fi 6G (6GHz band AX), which can reach 3.6 Gbps and is the industry's fastest mobile Wi-Fi. The Wi-Fi 6e standard also has a shorter latency, which is important for streaming media games from a local PC (or cloud, 5G modems).

It also supports the APTX kit's dual-antenna Bluetooth 5.2 technology and high-quality, low-delay wireless audio technologies.

Ai

The sixth-generation AI engine combines the new HEXAGON 780 and GPU digital computation capabilities for a total of 26 TOPS (the computing capability of the Snapdragon S865 AI is 15 TOPS).

Fused AI accelerator

The power consumption of the second iteration of the Sensing Hub has also been reduced. It uses less than 1 mA but can accomplish more jobs than the first generation - HUB will handle 80% of simple artificial intelligence activities rather than waking up the Hexagon CPU. Simple applications, such as elevators and activity detection, as well as listening to wake-up words, fall under this category.

Safety

Snapdragon 888 can take images of the encrypted seal with tamper-proof metadata to prove the image's validity (but performed in a privacy manner).

Hypervisor is also included in the Snapdragon 888, which was previously only available on the PC's 8CX Gen 2 CPU. This is a feature that is more common on servers and desktops since it allows various operating systems to coexist on the same hardware while maintaining their independence (so if an operating system is destroyed, the security of other operating systems is unaffected).

Ⅲ Technical indicator

Cellular modem

Wireless network

Ⅳ Snapdragon 888 and Snapdragon 870 Comparison

1.The Snapdragon 870 processor is manufactured using a 7nm process. The 7nm technology is relatively established, and a number of successful 7nm chip mobile phones are already on the market to attract customers. The Snapdragon 888 CPU uses a 5nm manufacturing technology. 5nm is a new manufacturing technology, and the entire architecture is considerably superior to 7nm in terms of transistor density.

2.The Snapdragon 870 processor has four A77 big nuclear cores and four A55 tiny core designs, with a 3.2GHz main core frequency. The Snapdragon 870 boasts a more advanced architecture and a greater frequency of operation. The Snapdragon 888 processor features a single new super big nuclear +3 A78 large nuclear +4 A55 tiny core with a maximum frequency of 2.84GHz. Despite the lower clock speed as the Snapdragon 870, Qualcomm claims that the Snapdragon 888 provides a 25% boost in computing power over the Snapdragon 865 with the ARM Cortex-X1 CPU. It has a 25% reduction in power loss. The actual user experience is superior to the Snapdragon 865.

3.The Snapdragon 870's baseband is the Snapdragon X55, which is an external 5G baseband. Snapdragon 888 uses the Snapdragon X60 as its baseband. It has a 5G baseband built-in. The Snapdragon 888 will outperform the Snapdragon 870 in terms of structural system.