Qualcomm has revealed and detailed the heart of the upcoming Snapdragon 820 SoC. The CPU duties of the upcoming SoC will be fulfilled by Qualcomm Kryo, a custom designed 64-bit quad-core processor manufactured on the latest 14nm FinFET technology. Kryo is the successor to Krait.
Kryo is designed to reach clock speeds as high as 2.2GHz. With this CPU at the heart of the Snapdragon 820 SoC users can expect "up to 2 times the performance and up to 2 times the power efficiency when compared with the Snapdragon 810 processor."
The CPU works in a heterogeneous computing system alongside elements of the Snapdragon 820 revealed previously like the next-gen camera and Adreno 530 GPU (with Vulkan support), the new Hexagon 680 DSP. In addition we heard about the Zeroth-powered feature called Snapdragon Smart Protect detailed earlier this week. The heterogeneous nature of the SoC brings efficiency and power savings – with the right tasks run on the right component processor for the job.
To help the whole SoC work in concert to the best of its abilities Qualcomm has designed the Symphony System Manager. An example of its functionality is as follows: "when a user is taking a picture, Symphony responds to the system demand making sure that the right components are powered up running at the needed frequency and only as long as needed. These components include CPU, Spectra ISP, Snapdragon Display Engine, GPU, GPS, and memory system".
Now we have all the pieces of the Snapdragon 820 SoC jigsaw assembled, it really does look like a formidable SoC. Hopefully, for the company, it will help people forget the hot running problems of the Snapdragon 810 and the moderate speed bumps offered by previous new designs. We look forward to seeing the first Snapdragon 820 devices arrive and SoC samples should be with device makers right now.
