Items tagged with Qualcomm
It is finally here, the first Snapdragon-branded smartphone, designed by ASUS with premium features from head to toe. Called the Smartphone for Snapdragon Insiders, the handset falls decidedly into flagship territory, with a price to match (more on that in a moment). Interestingly, however, it rocks Qualcomm's regular Snapdragon 888 system-on-chip (SoC), rather than the recently announced Snapdragon 888+. In all reality, the upgraded Snapdragon 888+ is not all that drastically faster than the base model—it increases the clock speed from 2.84GHz to 2.99GHz, for a little over a 5 percent boost in raw speed. Qualcomm also goosed its 6th generation AI engine (Hexagon 780) from 26 TOPS to 32...
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Windows 11 is finally out in the wild, and though there are some early caveats, it appears to be a nice update to the Windows ecosystem. However, now that Microsoft has made it publicly available, it also means people get to tinker with it to the extreme. Some developers have done just that as well, with reports of Windows 11 now running on Android phones with just a little software help. Xilin Wu is a developer behind the GitHub project “Renegade,” where “people try to port edk2 to different phones.” EDK2 is an open-source UEFI implementation that would allow ARM-based operating systems to be loaded on phones once ported. In this case, the goal was to get Windows 11 working...
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Late last year, newly formed NUVIA Inc. aimed to take on Intel and AMD in the data center with a massive $240 million funding round. Now, the company recently acquired by Qualcomm, is retargeting its sights on the mobile space and could take a shot at Apple in hopes of gaining better penetration in the laptop market as soon as next year. As it stands, Apple’s M1 chip is an incredibly power-efficient and performant mobile processor architecture that is tough to beat. However, on Thursday, Qualcomm Inc’s newly appointed CEO, Cristiano Amon spoke with Reuters explaining that, with the acquisition of Nuvia and the expertise acquired therein, Qualcomm could end up with the...
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We all knew it was coming, and Qualcomm today announced the more powerful version of its Snapdragon 888, aptly named the Snapdragon 888+. Like the Snapdragon 865+ and Snapdragon 855+ that came before it, the Snapdragon 888+ has the same basic blueprint as its namesake, with higher clocks for increased performance. This time around, the prime Kryo CPU core is clocked at up to 3GHz (2.995GHz to be exact), compared to 2.84GHz (just over a 5 percent boost). This should be enough to eke slightly better overall performance than the standard-issue Snapdragon 888. The other performance increase comes from Qualcomm's 6th generation AI Engine (Hexagon 780), which gets a 20 percent performance boost from...
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It appears that at least one executive over at Lenovo has some rather loose lips when it comes to unannounced products. Chen Jin, who serves as Lenovo's General Manager for the mobile phone unit, claimed in a Weibo post that the company's next-generation flagship mobile smartphone will launch in late 2021. While that news might not seem all that interesting on the surface, we must mention that the flagship will use Qualcomm's latest flagship SoC, which has not yet been announced. As a result, the smartphone could use one of two SoCs, with one being more likely than the other. The first [and most likely] possibility is a refresh of the existing Snapdragon 888 that launched earlier this year. Flagship...
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NVIDIA announced its intention to purchase Arm last year for a record $40 billion. With Arm under its helm, the company would play a pivotal role in shaping the future of the chip architecture that powers billions of devices (and growing) around the globe. Given the many players that leverage Arm chip designs – including heavy hitters like Qualcomm, Apple, Samsung, MediaTek, and countless others – the deal has faced heavy regulatory scrutiny. With this in mind, incoming Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon is offering an alternative to an NVIDIA-only agreement. Incoming Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon Amon suggested to The Telegraph that Qualcomm could join a consortium of key industry players...
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In due time, Qualcomm is expected to release a Snapdragon 888 Plus system-on-chip, just as there were Plus versions of the Snapdragon 865 and Snapdragon 855 SoCs. What comes after that, however, is shaping up to be a pretty big upgrade according to the latest leak, which claims Qualcomm's next premium SoC will be built on a 4-nanometer manufacturing process. That makes sense, given that the Snapdragon 888 is built on a 5nm node. Let's quickly recap that part before moving onto the latest rumor. Qualcomm's existing flagship mobile chip features around 10 billion transistors, an eight-core CPU (four Kryo 680 Silver cores clocked at up to 1.8GHz, three Kryo 680 Gold cores clocked at up to 2.42GHz,...
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In late April, we first learned that Samsung would launch a new Arm-powered Windows 10 laptop series aimed at budget shoppers. Interestingly, the details provided in the leaked report pretty much nailed the specifications of the Galaxy Book Go, which was officially announced by Samsung this morning. As previously reported, the Galaxy Book Go is a thin and light laptop with a 14-inch Full HD IPS display. Powering the device is Qualcomm's newly announced Snapdragon 7c Gen 2 SoC. Of course, the Snapdragon 7c Gen 2 features an integrated modem, but 4G LTE won't come standard on the Galaxy Book Go for obvious cost-saving reasons. So instead, it will be an optional upgrade for those that need to access...
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Last year around this time, Arm announced its next-gen, custom Cortex-X1 core, which was its most potent CPU architecture to date. The Cortex-X1 "prime" core is found inside modern flagship SoCs like Qualcomm's Snapdragon 888 and Samsung's Exynos 2100. Today, however, Arm is announcing the successor to the Cortex-X1, unsurprisingly called the Cortex-X2. Cortex-X2: Leading The Performance Charge For The New Armv9 Architecture The Cortex-X2 is based on the new Armv9 architecture, and Arm claims that it will deliver up to a 30 percent uplift in performance over the Cortex-X1 found in devices like the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra. There's also a claimed 2x uplift in machine learning (ML) performance,...
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Back in September 2020, Qualcomm debuted the flagship Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2 5G Compute Platform for Windows 10 on Arm devices. This was a slight refresh of its predecessor, with the major update being the addition of a standalone Snapdragon X55 5G modem. Today, however, Qualcomm's Snapdragon 7c Gen 2 to steps into the limelight, and it features new optimizations compared to its low power predecessor as well. The Snapdragon 7c Gen 2 has been tweaked for increased performance and efficiency over the first-generation chip, although the differences are more subtle. While Kryo 468 CPU in the original Snapdragon 7c is clocked at up to 2.4GHz, the Snapdragon 7c Gen 2 boosts the maximum clock to 2.55GHz....
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Qualcomm is putting the pedal to the metal when it comes to 5G SoCs for mobile devices. The company struck it big last year with dozens of design wins for the Snapdragon 765G, a mid-range SoC with an integrated 5G modem. The company looked to expand upon that success earlier this year with the launch of the Snapdragon 780G, and today we're witnessing the arrival of the Snapdragon 778G. Whereas Snapdragon 780G availability is limited to a few OEMs, the Snapdragon 778G is available to a broader base of Qualcomm customers. Qualcomm says that it currently has Motorola, Honor, OPPO, Realme, and Xiaomi signed on to release the chip in "high tier" smartphones. Like the Snapdragon 780G, the Snapdragon...
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Qualcomm has the lion's share of the market with its Snapdragon processors when it comes to Android smartphones. From its low-end 400- and 600-Series SoCs to the high-end 800-Series, Qualcomm has the smartphone market cornered. However, MediaTek is looking to challenge Qualcomm head-on with the Dimensity 900. The Dimensity 900 is a 6nm SoC aimed at the premium mid-range smartphone sector. In that sense, the Dimensity 900 seems poised to challenge the likes of the newly introduced Snapdragon 780G. The SoC is an 8-core design, with dual Cortex-A78 performance cores clocked at 2.4GHz and six Cortex-A55 efficiency cores clocked at 2GHz. For comparison, the Snapdragon 780G uses four 2.4GHz Cortex-A78...
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While Qualcomm and Apple buried the [legal] hatchet in 2019 concerning lawsuits regarding licensing and copyright infringement over 4G LTE modems, the latter is still far along with the development of its own next-generation hardware. In years past, Apple used a mixture of Intel and Qualcomm modems (its current iPhones and iPads exclusively use Qualcomm hardware). But we all know that Apple is quickly bringing major component design in-house, and the modem is a pricey piece of the smartphone puzzle. According to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple's first in-house 5G modems will debut in 2023 iPhones. That means that Qualcomm will have just two more years of exclusivity before Apple charts its...
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Our smartphones, over the years, have from a tool used primarily by tech enthusiasts to something that almost everyone walks around with today. As such, our smartphones are used for everything from making phone calls, to texting, to gaming, to taking photos, to banking. And when it comes to smartphones, Android devices have the most market share, and the majority of them are using Qualcomm Snapdragon SoCs. Besides featuring a powerful CPU and GPU, modern Snapdragon SoCs also feature an integrated modem that gives you 4G LTE and 5G connectivity. Unfortunately, the folks from Check Point Research have discovered a vulnerability in Qualcomm's Mobile Station Modems (MSM). Google's Android operating...
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Google's Pixel 5 has been around since October 2020 and has seen regular updates via Pixel Feature Drops and monthly security updates. So, when the Android Pixel Security Update landed this month, we assumed that it would just be another run-of-the-mill release. However, a curious addition in the release notes hinted at something big for Pixel 4a 5G and Pixel 5 smartphones, both of which use the mid-range Qualcomm Snapdragon 765G SoC. Specifically, Google explains that the update includes "Performance optimizations for certain graphics-intensive apps and games." We decided to test this out for ourselves and updated our Pixel 5 review sample to run a few benchmarks. In the back of our minds, we...
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Last year, Qualcomm launched several 700G series mid-range SoCs with integrated 5G connectivity for the mid-range and “premium” mid-range smartphone markets. One of its most popular SKUs was the Snapdragon 765G which landed in everything from the Google Pixel 5 to the LG Wing. Today, Qualcomm is following up with Snapdragon 780G 5G Mobile Platform. Whereas the Snapdragon 765G was built on Samsung’s 7nm process node, the Snapdragon 780G uses Samsung’s bleeding-edge 5nm process node. This should hopefully lead to further power efficiency gains for the incoming wave of mid-range smartphones. The Snapdragon 765G used two Cortex-A76 high-performance cores in conjunction with...
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There is little doubt that Qualcomm will launch an updated version of its Snapdragon 8cx system-on-chip (SoC) for laptops, and when it arrives, the spunky piece of hardware figures to deliver a big leap in performance over the current version. That's what a leaked benchmark run over at Geekbench seemingly indicates. The listing shows a benchmark run obtained from a Qualcomm Reference Design (QRD) chip, identified as a Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 part. Assuming the listing is accurate, what we are looking at is basically an engineering sample for Qualcomm's next-gen Snapdragon 8cx. As currently configured, it is an 8-core/16-thread processor with a 2.7GHz clock speed. Here's the benchmark listing......
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There are no two ways about it, the Nintendo Switch is a smashing success—Switch sales soared last year, with more units sold to date than the 3DS. Can the success of the Switch be replicated on other platforms? Hardware makers aim to find out. That includes Qualcomm, which is developing a handheld console that is similar in appearance to the Switch. It won't run Nintendo Switch games, though, at least not natively. Not the least bit surprising, Qualcomm is building its custom console around Android, and apparently even has ambitions of offering its own app storefront. In other words, Qualcomm is really going for it, on both the hardware and software side of the equation. The folks at Android...
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The past six months have been an exercise in frustration for enthusiasts attempting to get their hands on AMD/NVIDIA graphics cards, Ryzen processors, and even new game consoles like the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. The overwhelming demand for chips now seems to be affecting the largest single supplier of SoCs for smartphones: Qualcomm. According to a new report, Qualcomm is finding it challenging to meet the demand for its Snapdragon processors, which are used not only in mobile devices like smartphones and tablets but also in automobiles. According to unnamed sources, Qualcomm has been inundated with orders for its flagship Snapdragon 888 SoC. While strong demand for premium-priced and...
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The ASUS ROG Phone family has always been synonymous with squeezing the most performance out the Android smartphone platform and more specifically Qualcomm's Snapdragon mobile processing platforms. If you've been keeping tabs on the ROG phone line-up, you're probably aware that ASUS recently unveiled its 5th gen ROG Phone 5, and it's based on Qualcomm's powerful new Snapdragon 888 mobile SoC. With big gains claimed in both standard compute and graphics workloads, versus Qualcomm's previous gen Snapdragon 865, the ASUS ROG Phone 5 provides for an interesting vehicle to look at what should prove to be absolute top-end performance for flagship Android phones in the weeks and months ahead. We've...
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Over the past year, the importance of crystal-clear audio has become readily apparent on our computing devices. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in many institutions implementing work/learn from home policies, and many people have relied on videoconferencing to keep in contact with team members. Videoconferencing thrives on quality video and audio experiences, and Qualcomm is tackling one of those aspects on mobile devices today. Enter Snapdragon Sound, a suite of hardware and software technologies that aims to bring more immersive audio experiences to mobile users. Snapdragon Sound will apply to mobile devices like smartphones, tablets, Snapdragon-powered laptops,...
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A consumer rights group in the United Kingdom is suing Qualcomm, a major chipmaker in the United States, for allegedly abusing its position to overcharge for chip and patent licensing. According to the lawsuit, Qualcomm's actions led to consumers paying too much for smartphones produced by Apple and Samsung, and is seeking £482.5 million (around $680 million in US currency) in damages. "We believe Qualcomm’s practices are anticompetitive and have so far taken around £480 million from UK consumers’ pockets—this needs to stop. We are sending a clear warning that if companies like Qualcomm indulge in manipulative practices which harm consumers, Which? is prepared to...
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