On May 8, QUALCOMM released a new mid tier SoC in San Diego, California (now known as the mobile platform)—— Snapdragon 660 and 630 Qualcomm generously released many technologies from Snapdragon 820 and even Snapdragon 835 to the midrange platform, and this time there are four major upgrade points: Improve performance and endurance, LTE network speed, shooting and fast charging In addition, it even has advanced functions such as machine learning and visual processing.
Among them, the Snapdragon 660 is almost destined to be a very eye-catching mid tier SoC, just like the big black horse Snapdragon 650/652/653 last year. It is fully equipped to compete with the latest flagship of MediaTek, or even Qualcomm's previous flagship.
Snapdragon 660 and 630 mobile platforms include: SoC with integrated baseband function, RF front-end Wi-Fi、 Power management, audio codec, loudspeaker amplifier and other software and hardware components. They all use Samsung's 14nm LPP FinFET process and the same modem and camera architecture. Both of them even have common software and pins. OEM manufacturers can easily switch between the two platforms.
Network upgrade
LTE： Qualcomm has made great efforts to improve the speed of LTE modems. Previously, the Snapdragon X8 LTE modem, a Cat.7 baseband (300Mbps downlink, 100Mbps upload), has been included in the Snapdragon 600 and even the Snapdragon 400 series. After Snapdragon X16 (1.0Gbps downlink/150Mbps upload), the first LTE modem whose speed exceeded Gbps, Qualcomm put X16 into Snapdragon 835 this year, and the X20 released in early 2017 reached the speed of 1.2Gbps downlink/150Mbps upload;
In today's Snapdragon 660 and 630, Qualcomm has introduced the X12 LTE modem of the previous generation flagship Snapdragon 820/821. This is a flagship product that has reached the Cat.12/13 level, with 600Mbps downlink (3x20MHz CA, 256-QAM) and 150Mbps uplink speed (2x20MHz CA, 64-QAM);
WiFi： Snapdragon 660 supports 2x2 MU-MIMO 802.11ac Wi Fi, and its data throughput is twice that of Snapdragon 652. It can improve the signal reception ability in hard to penetrate brick and concrete wall environments such as homes and offices, and reduce the power consumption during downloading by up to 60%. In addition, it also has the functions of LTE/Wi Fi antenna sharing and dual frequency concurrency (DBS) (4G and WiFi are used together to improve network speed);
RF front-end and other: Snapdragon 660/630 are integrated with Qua that supports carrier aggregation lcomm ® TruSignal ™ The adaptive tuning antenna can dynamically adjust the signal strength to better complete voice and data transmission and packet tracking (the first batch of Snapdragon 600 SoC with envelope tracking technology). By improving the energy efficiency ratio of the power amplifier, it can improve the endurance and reduce the temperature. In addition, it also supports the HPUE technology used by Sprint (it seems to have nothing to do with domestic users).
ISP shooting and fast charging
Snapdragon 660/630 is upgraded to Spectra 160 ISP (the former is dual core), which is a simplified version of Spectra 180 ISP on Snapdragon 835, but also supports dual camera and dual PDAF (phase focusing), video electronic anti shake, and enhanced weak light performance. In the dual camera field, Qualcomm also has its own smooth "optical zoom" technology, which allows two cameras with different focal lengths to switch between smooth zoom like the dual camera of iPhone.
Snapdragon 660/630 follows the steps of Snapdragon 835 and supports Qualcomm Fast Charge 4.0 technology (the previous flagship Snapdragon 821 only supports QC 3.0), which is 20% faster and 30% more energy efficient than Qualcomm Fast Charge 3.0.
Snapdragon 660
Snapdragon 660 is the replacement product of the previous generation of the most powerful mid tier Snapdragon 653, and the strongest SoC in the current Snapdragon 600 series. Like Kryo 280 on Snapdragon 835, the Kryo 260 architecture on Snapdragon 660 is probably based on the semi self-designed CPU architecture of ARM public A73 and A53, which is also big LITTLE structure.
Kryo 260 is weaker than Kryo 280 in cache, main frequency and process. The two cluster cores of Kryo 260 have 1MB of L2 cache respectively, while the cluster cores of Kryo 280 have 2MB and 1MB of cache respectively. As for the performance level of Snapdragon 835, you can poke at us Love to play computer games In the previous detailed review of Samsung Galaxy S8/S8+debut and the review of Xiaomi 6, Snapdragon 660 is not expected to lag far behind. Its CPU performance may even be close to the Kirin 955 of last year, and there should be no doubt that it will surpass the Snapdragon 821.
The GPU part is Adreno 512, which supports the latest 3D graphics API such as Vulkan, and can push a screen with a resolution of up to 2560 * 1600. The performance of Adreno 510 on Snapdragon 653 is 30% higher than that of Adreno 510. The main improvement is likely to come from the frequency increase (bonus of advanced process), and the frequency increase may be very large, but this is still a very big leap. It's just a long way from the Adreno 530 on the previous generation Snapdragon 820.
The digital signal processing DSP (DSP) of Snapdragon 660 is the Hexagon 680, which is also part of the former flagship Snapdragon 820. It integrates the Hexagon vector extension core (HVX, Vector eXtensions), which can replace the CPU to complete image, video, virtual display, computer vision and other processing tasks.
This DSP supports dual vector threads running at the same time, and both sides support 1024 bit SIMD SIMD single instruction multiple data structure pipelines. For comparison, the CPU of ARM architecture generally includes two 128 bit SIMD NEON vector pipelines. Let HVX content run at 4096 bits per cycle. As a comparison, a single core CPU can only achieve 256 bits of data per cycle. The Hexagon 680 also includes four scalar operation instruction threads, and each thread includes four VLIW pipelines. Using two scalar and two vector threads, audio and video tasks can be processed in parallel.
It also supports Qualcomm's neural network processing engine SDK, TensorFlow (Google Brain's second generation machine learning system) and Halide graphics processing technology. This is the first SoC in the Snapdragon 600 series that supports advanced functions such as machine learning and computer vision (Samsung S8 camera's bixby vision and UAV visual obstacle avoidance may be useful).
Snapdragon 630
It is a new generation product of Snapdragon 625/626. Although it is still an 8-core A53 architecture, it is still in big The size and architecture of LITTLE are more clear. Four 2.2G A53 (the same frequency as Snapdragon 626) use 1M L2 cache, while four A53 cores have only 1.8GHz and 512KB L2 cache.
It may not be very different from Snapdragon 626 in CPU performance, but on GPU, Adreno 508 of Snapdragon 630 claims to have 30% improvement over Adreno 506 of Snapdragon 626, and has added Vulkan and a large number of new 3D graphics APIs.
Its DSP is Hexagon 642, and it also has a neural network processing engine SDK, which can provide TensorFlow and machine learning functions, but it does not have the Hexagon vector extension core (HVX, Vector eXtensions) on the Hexagon 680/682 DSP on the Snapdragon 660 and the Snapdragon 835. Processing tasks such as pictures, videos, virtual displays, and computer vision still rely on the CPU, which will lead to lower efficiency and performance.
summary
Snapdragon 660/630 is a very sincere product. They have many functions that only existed in Snapdragon 800 series before. They also add support like Bluetooth 5.0 and LPDDR4 memory (up to 8GB, compared with LPDDR3, it can reduce energy consumption and improve bandwidth).
The Snapdragon 660 is more comparable to the CPU performance and baseband performance of the flagship SoC last year. It has 14nm addition, LPDDR4, and UFS support. It directly uses the DSP of the Snapdragon 820. It has advanced functions such as machine learning, neural networks, and even Qualcomm Fast Charge 4.0, which was not available in the previous generation of flagship. Its actual point experience is estimated to be very close to that of the Snapdragon 820 last year, and its estimated price will be lower than that of the Snapdragon 820.
If you really want to talk about the shortcomings, it is estimated that the GPU performance gap that Qualcomm deliberately left behind is sufficient. If the manufacturer configures a 1080P screen, or places it in a 720P small screen machine, this performance is also completely sufficient. If the price is appropriate, this is simply to eliminate the MediaTek. It is likely to reproduce the embarrassing situation that "Snapdragon 650/652/653 can stop MediaTek X25" last year. Even if it is not to the point of "being pushed to the ground for friction", MediaTek will not be happy this year.
Among them, Snapdragon 660 has been debugged for partners, and the mobile phones equipped with it are expected to be launched in the second quarter of this year. According to recent rumors, the first machine is likely to be OPPO R11 (OPPO is also used by manufacturers seeking stability, and it is estimated that the supply of Snapdragon 660 will be sufficient by then). The Snapdragon 630 will be available to manufacturers at the end of May, and the mobile phones equipped with it are expected to be launched in the third quarter of this year.
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