Snapdragon 845: Everything You Need To Know
A majority of Android phones are powered by the chipsets made by Qualcomm. From phones priced at Rs 6999 running Snapdragon 212 to the Galaxy Note8 priced at Rs 67900 powered by the Snapdragon 835, smartphones in all price range run on a Qualcomm chipset, with some exceptions running MediaTek chipsets.
For 2018, the flagship phones will be powered by the new chip from Qualcomm, the Snapdragon 845 which was announced two days ago during the Qualcomm Tech Summit.
The Snapdragon 845 has the new Kryo 385 CPU architecture and an upgraded Adreno 630 GPU. The chip is built on Samsung’s 10nm LPP FinFET, its second generation 10nm node that offers “10-percent higher performance or 15-percent lower power consumption compared to its first generation”. Similar to the previous generation, the Kryo 385 is built on Arm Cortex technology. Qualcomm claims that thanks to its customised off-the-shelf design from Arm, the chip promises up to a 25% performance upgrade compared with the last generation Snapdragon 835. The four performance cores clock up to 2.8 GHz and are paired with four energy efficient cores that can reach up to 1.7 GHz.
A lot of experts claim that what bezel-less design was to 2017 smartphones, AI and machine learning will be to 2018 smartphones. With Apple and Huawei already claiming a stake in the AI space with their new chipsets, a lot will be expected from the Snapdragon 845. In terms of performance, the Snapdragon 845 gets a 3X upgrade in AI tasks over the Snapdragon 835. This comes down to upgraded CPU and GPU performance but, the Snapdragon 845 also includes a third generation Vector DSP with HVX, called the Hexagon 685, which is optimised for AI and imaging workloads.
| Specifications | Snapdragon 845 | Snapdragon 835 |
| CPU Core | Semi-custom ARM Cortex – Kryo 385 | Semi-custom ARM Cortex – Kryo 280 |
| CPU Configuration | 4x 2.8GHz (Cortex-A75) 4x 1.7GHz (Cortex-A55) |
4x 2.45GHz (Cortex-A73) 4x 1.9GHz (Cortex-A53) |
| GPU | Adreno 630 | Adreno 540 |
| Manufacturing Process | 10nm LPP FinFET | 10nm LPE FinFET |
| DSP | Hexagon 685 with HVX | Hexagon 682 with HVX |
For multimedia, Qualcomm’s latest Spectra image signal processor has been rebuilt from scratch. The new Spectra 280 ISP introduces new video capture options, such as 720P at 480fps, 60 fps video recording at up to 16MP of resolution, and the ability to capture 64x more high-dynamic range colour information than before.
Qualcomm has also introduced a new security feature. It has added Security Processing Unit (SPU), a hardware isolated security subsystem inside the Snapdragon 845. This dedicated chip acts as a storage unit for any saved biometric information, such as fingerprint, face, or iris scans, and builds on Qualcomm’s existing security software.
The Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+ are expected to be the first of the many phones which will be powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 chipset. Xiaomi also announced that its new flagship, presumably Xiaomi Mi 7 will have the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 chipset as well.
