Qualcomm is expected to announce the Snapdragon 865 processor during its Snapdragon Tech Summit scheduled for December 3. The processor will be the brain behind most of the flagship phones scheduled to launch next year. Thanks to a new leak, we don’t have to wait for the launch day, which still about three weeks away, to know the details about the processor.

Chinese blogger and leakster @Digital Chat Station has revealed the configuration of Qualcomm’s next processor. According to a Weibo post, the Snapdragon 865 will be an octa-core processor just like the Snapdragon 855 and Snapdragon 855+.

The SoC will embrace the same 1+3+4 core arrangement as its predecessors. The Snapdragon 865’s CPU will have 1 x 2.84GHz Cortex-A77 (custom Kryo core) + 3 x 2.42GHz Cortex-A77 cores (custom Kryo cores) + 4 x 1.8GHz Cortex-A55 cores (custom Kryo cores). The GPU is revealed to be the Adreno 650 clocked at 587MHz.

The performance cores have the same clock speed as the performance cores of the Snapdragon 855. However, the switch from Cortex-A76 which the SD855’s Kryo 485 is based on will bring improvements in performance. According to Arm, the Cortex-A77 brings a 20% improvement in performance compared to the Cortex-A76.

The power efficiency cores have been unchanged as they are still based on the Cortex-A55 cores. The new GPU is expected to bring between 17% to 20% increase in performance.

The Snapdragon 865 will most likely appear first in a Samsung phone, specifically the Galaxy S11 series. The 7nm mobile chipset is expected to be fabricated by TSMC and not Samsung. It should also feature an integrated 5G modem, specifically the Snapdragon X55 modem.

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(Source)

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Huawei’s latest processors are the Kirin 990 and Kirin 990 5G. At the moment, they can be only found inside the Mate 30 and the Mate 30 Pro and their 5G versions. The processors will power Huawei and Honor flagship phones for the next year or thereabout before a new flagship SoC will be released. According to new reports, that SoC is already under development and it will be called the Kirin 1000!

According to Huawei Central, the Kirin 1000 will be built on the 5nm process based on info from industry sources. The sources also informed them that the processor will be announced in H2 2019 and first appear in the Huawei Mate 40 series.

The Kirin 1000 will feature the Cortex-A77 cores Arm announced earlier this year and which was expected to be present in the Kirin 990 instead of the Cortex-A76 cores it uses. The A77 brings a 20% improvement in performance and with the switch to a smaller node size, that improvement in performance should be higher.

There are still a lot of unknown details about the processor but that isn’t surprising since there is still about 10 months of waiting before it is announced.

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(Source)

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5G is the new craze in the smartphone industry and we’ve already seen a bunch of smartphones like Galaxy S10 5G, Huawei Mate 20 X 5G, and even the OPPO Reno 5G. These new-age 5G phones were initially launched in the European market and all of them had one thing in common – they were super expensive. MediaTek wants to change this with its new 5G SoC. For some reason, this Taiwanese chipmaker has decided to call it simply as the MediaTek 5G SoC. The company unveiled the new chipset at Computex Taiwan earlier today.

Unlike current smartphones in the market which use a two-chip 5G solution (like the Snapdragon X50 modem), the MediaTek 5G SoC features an integrated modem. Plus, the SoC comes with multi-mode support which means there’s no need for an additional LTE modem. This support allows the MediaTek’s 5G chip to connect to anything from 2G to 4G when the new-age 5G connectivity is not available. If you remember, Qualcomm’s second-generation modem, the Snapdragon X55 is an integrated one-chip solution and comes with multi-mode support. However, it’ll only be available by 2020, around the same time as MediaTek’s 5G modem will be available in smartphones.

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5G isn’t the only highlight of the new MediaTek SoC. The chip is actually pretty capable too, thanks to the new-age Cortex-A77 CPU and Mali-G77 GPU. These two designs were announced by ARM a couple of days back and boast increased processing power and efficiency as compared to its predecessors. The chip also comes with the APU (AI Processing Unit) 3.0 which adds new features such as real-time autofocus, auto exposure, auto white balance, photo de-blurring, and beautification. Other notable features include support for 80MP camera sensors and 4K video encoding and decoding at 60fps.

Talking about its 5G capabilities, the SoC supports downloads up to 4.7Gbps and uploads up to 2.7Gbps. The new MediaTek 5G modem supports sub-6Ghz frequencies, which the company expects to be more widely used than mmWave frequencies around the world. This is one way how the new SoC cuts costs and makes it more affordable than current solutions.

Expect to see the new MediaTek 5G SoC in affordable flagships and premium mid-rangers. The chip will be available in Q3 2019 and phones with this SoC is said to hit the markets around early 2020.

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Arm has announced its next-gen CPU and GPU cores for the next set of flagship processors. Both were unveiled at the manufacturer’s TechDay event and are successors to the Cortex-A76 CPU and Mali-G76 GPU.

The announcement of these new technologies will have a significant impact on the next-generation of processors from chip manufacturers like Qualcomm, Samsung, hopefully, MediaTek, Apple, Samsung, and maybe even Huawei‘s HiSilicon if their current predicament comes to an end. These chip manufacturers use custom-designs or stock versions of Arm’s instruction set for their own chipsets.

Cortex-A77

The Cortex-A77 improves upon the already impressive Cortex-A76 cores. Its core features are said to be mainly the same as the A-76. This isn’t a bad thing as the A76 was designed to be the foundation for this year and next year’s cores.

Nevertheless, the A77 brings a 20% IPC (instructions per clock) improvement in performance which is a really big deal. It also has a much better performance when it comes to machine learning. The new cores are expected to be built on the 7nm core just like the A76 too which means we won’t see a big jump in performance between this and previous generation unlike the switch from 10nm to 7nm.

Mali-G77

The Mali-G77 GPU is built on an entirely new architecture called Valhall (coined from Valhalla), following its adopted Norse-related nomenclature. Arm has ditched Bifrost which didn’t bring the expected gains in GPU performance.

Valhall is said to bring a new ISA and has a compute core design that tries to address the faults of the Bifrost architecture. Arm promises a 30% improvement in energy efficiency, a 30 increase in performance density and a 60% improvement for machine learning. Performance is said to be up to 1.4x better than the previous generation and power consumption is between 17% and 29% less (50% less than that of the MaliG72). However, the frequency will likely remain at 850MHz as the Mali-G76 GPU.

Arm says it expects SoCs with the G77 GPU will provide performance similar to that of Apple’s A12 GPU and with better power efficiency. That sounds really exciting and we can’t wait to see how true this is when the first set of SoCs launch next year.

We should actually expect to see it this year if Huawei’s Kirin 985 chipset is still on track but with Arm cutting off business with Huawei, we will have to wait for Samsung’s Exynos 9830 next year.

(Sources: 1, 2, 3)

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Multiple reports have claimed that the 7nm Kirin 980 SoC will be featuring ARM Cortex A77 CPU cores for performance coupled with Cortex A77 CPU cores for reliability. However, since well-known industry insiders such as Roland Quandt and Ice Universe have claimed that such reports are fake since Cortex A77 has not been announced yet. Today, GizmoChina has received an official confirmation from ARM that the Kirin 980 will be equipped with Cortex A76 and the “Cortex A77 does not exist.” This piece of information debunks all rumors that have claimed the Cortex A77 may get unveiled at IFA 2018 and it will end up inside Kirin 980.

In June, ARM had announced the Cortex A76 CPU as the successor for the Cortex A75. In comparison to its predecessor, the Cortex A76 promises 35 percent improvement in performance and offers 40 percent better power efficiency. And also, it delivers up to 4 times the existing performance in Machine Learning.

The HiSilicon Kirin 970 chipset that was announced in September 2017 now powers more than 10 smartphones by Huawei. The Kirin 970 includes quad-core Cortex A73 CPU and quad-core Cortex A53 CPU. It also features Mali-G72 graphics and an AI NPU unit.

Huawei has recently rolled out a press release that the upcoming Mate 20 series will feature Kirin 980, but it did not confirm anything on its specifications. The press release also discussed that rumors are claiming that the Kirin 980 will be equipped with quad-core Cortex A76 CPU and quad-core Cortex A55 CPU. The SoC is expected to produce maximum clocking speeds of 2.8 GHz. The 7nm Kirin 980 will be soon rivaled by Apple A12 SoC that will be fueling the upcoming iPhones in September and 7nm Snapdragon 855 by Qualcomm that is rumored to go official by December.

The specifications of the Kirin 980 will be revealed at the end of this month through its official unveil event at IFA 2018 in Berlin, Germany. The Kirin 980 will be based on 7nm manufacturing process of TSMC. The SoC is also expected to arrive with an enhanced NPU unit for managing AI tasks. The Kirin 980 powered Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro will be debuting in October.

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