Bringing Armv9 To Premium Smartphones

Alongside the new Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1, the company is also rolling out a new SoC for the premium phone market, the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1, as part of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Night event in China tonight. The traditional flagship SoC, the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1, is the first non-flagship SoC since Qualcomm implemented a new platform naming and differentiation scheme. However, like the previous Snapdragon 7xx series, the latest Snapdragon 7 SoCs follow the same design mantra of offering flagship-level features at more modest performance and cost.

Among Qualcomm’s smartphone SoC Pantheons, the Snapdragon 7 Gen1 is the successor to last year’s Snapdragon 780G / 778G parts. For now, Qualcomm sticks to a single SKU, but last year the 780G and 778G were months apart, so Qualcomm could diverge things even further.

Like its predecessor, 7 Gen 1 follows Qualcomm’s cascade development strategy. In this strategy, the new features that were first pioneered in the flagship SoC will be implemented one after another on future lower-tier chips. The big update for Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 was, of course, the switch to the Arm v9 architecture and the CPU cores associated with Arm, but now Arm’s premium tier SoCs are doing the same.

In terms of configuration, the new 7 Gen 1 is very similar to the 780G and implements a 1 + 3 + 4 core configuration. Qualcomm uses only two core types here (high performance Cortex-A710 and high efficiency Cortex-A510), so the prime core is not the original core type (8G1 Cortex-X2), but another Cortex- A710 here. Qualcomm clocks this core at 2.4GHz, and the remaining three A710s are clocked a bit lower at 2.36GHz. Finally, the A510 is clocked at the same 1.8GHz as the 8G1.

Qualcomm’s memory controller will also be updated with the CPU core shift. 7 Gen 1 adds LPDDR5 functionality and supports the same LPDDR5-6400 data rate as 8 Gen 1. Therefore, using the 2×16 bit channel memory bus, 7Gen1 can access up to 25.6GB / sec of memory bandwidth. It is 50% better than the LPDDR4X compatible 780G.

Unusual for Qualcomm, the company isn’t talking about CPU performance with new components. Therefore, with no benchmark data, little can be said about performance expectations here. The new Arm core should improve performance, but there is plenty of room for implementation details.

Qualcomm, on the other hand, is a bit more talkative in terms of GPUs, but not so much. Like the 8G1, Qualcomm has removed model numbers for all types of 7 Gen 1 GPUs, so it’s just an “Adreno” that’s indistinguishable from the 8G1 or previous generation parts. Technically, you can’t even guess if you’re using Qualcomm’s new GPU architecture. However, given the feature set and cascade design strategy, this is almost certainly the case.But what Qualcomm teeth When it comes to GPU performance for the new parts, it’s 20% faster than the Snapdragon 778G, the Adreno 642 LGPU. By using a weak SKU, this is Qualcomm’s cherry picking, but at least for now, we’ve confirmed that the 7Gen1 is somewhat faster than its predecessor.

This is also good because the game is one of the main focal points of 7Gen1. Qualcomm’s lead in 7 Gen 1 marketing material is game / GPU performance, and it’s no coincidence that this part was announced in. An event in China. Mobile games are big all over the world, but nothing is as big as the Chinese market. Therefore, Qualcomm undoubtedly expects OEM partners to shift a significant number of gaming-focused phones in its busy market.

Qualcomm, on the other hand, isn’t as aggressive in terms of fabs as it’s not a flagship part like the new 8+ Gen 1. The 7 Gen 1 is manufactured on the same Samsung 4nm process as the original 8 Gen 1, and Qualcomm deliberately replaces TSMC as its flagship SoC. Samsung’s process is clearly a poor performance option at this point, with TSMC lines running around doors and blocks, but Qualcomm has a less constrained (and definitely cheaper) fab on the second fab. It’s only natural to choose-Tear Smartphone SoC.

Aside from CPU and GPU, Qualcomm’s cascade design strategy also means that other notable features of the 8G1 are migrating to the new 7 Series SoC. This includes Qualcomm’s latest AI hardware and its reliability management engine, in addition to the latest Spectra ISP.

For 7 Gen1 Spectra ISP, it has been scaled down from 8G1 accordingly. Qualcomm continues to implement a “triple” ISP that can handle up to three simultaneous cameras, but with a lower total throughput. Still, ISPs can now process images up to 200MP, but if you need to have zero shutter lag, it drops significantly to 64MP. Beyond that, this is another 14-bit imaging pipeline ISP, equivalent to the 780G, but without the additional dynamic range of the 8G1.

The package ends with an integrated modem in the form of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X62. Compared to last year’s 780G SoC and its X53 modem, the 7 Gen 1 with the X62 offers both higher throughput and more bandwidth. In particular, this SoC is millimeter-wave compatible, a significant omission from last year’s SoC. Overall, the 7G1 / X62 can reach download speeds up to 4.4Gbps, an improvement of 33% over its predecessor.

In summary, Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 will be able to ship Qualcomm’s two new SoCs faster. According to the company, SoC-based mobile phones will be available this quarter, with some OEMs planning to release new chip-based phones by Honor, OPPO and Xiaomi.