On the Snapdragon Summit, Chris Patrick, SVP and GM, Cellular Handset, Qualcomm, unveiled the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, Qualcomm’s flagship SoC for premium smartphones, and the successor of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 and the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1.
System Efficiency: Kryo CPU Cluster
Let’s begin with system efficiency, the usual sizzling subject for any new technology of processors. Qualcomm has improved all efficiency features over final 12 months’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 1.
The brand new Kryo CPU cluster is now primarily based on one ARM Cortex X3 (Prime, 3.19 GHz), four efficiency cores (2.8 GHz), and three effectivity cores (2.0 GHz).
Final 12 months’s technology featured one ARM Cortex X2 (Prime, 3 GHz), three Cortex A710 (2.5 GHz), and 4 Cortex A510 (1.8 GHz), appropriate with the ARMv9 Gen 1 CPU structure.
The additional efficiency core and the brand new ARMv9 Gen 2 structure drive many of the efficiency increase, whereas the minimal enhance in CPU frequency additionally gives an additional nudge.
Qualcomm estimates this new CPU cluster to be 35% quicker and as much as 40% extra power-efficient than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, the earlier market chief for flagship Android smartphones.
The 40% power-efficiency quantity is surprisingly excessive, and Qualcomm claims it’s as a result of Kryo CPU’s new microarchitecture. And not using a clearer clarification, I’ll assume it’s primarily based on one of the best case examine, and upcoming benchmarks would possibly shed extra mild too.
The brand new Kryo CPU options an 8MB L3 cache, a 33% enhance over the 6MB L3 cache within the earlier technology. Augmenting the cache dimension helps to keep away from costly DDR reminiscence entry at any time when attainable.
The brand new chip presents assist for LP-DDR5x reminiscence as much as 4200 MHz and with as much as 16 GB of reminiscence density.
Synthetic Intelligence (AI) Engine – Snapdragon Sensible
One of many high areas “that shall be essential to Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is synthetic intelligence. This platform is purpose-built for AI. […] On the coronary heart of our AI expertise is the Qualcomm AI Engine [which] is manufactured from a number of applied sciences together with Adreno GPU, Kryo, Sensing Hub, Reminiscence, and Hexagon” stated Francisco Cheng, Senior Managing Director, Product Advertising, Qualcomm, throughout our briefing.
Throughout all applied sciences concerned in processing AI fashions, the Qualcomm AI Engine eighth technology improved the efficiency by as much as 4.35X and the performance-per-watt by 60% over the seventh technology.
Hexagon, AI co-processor
Qualcomm defines Hexagon as a “fused AI accelerator structure,” which means that the Hexagon logic block is manufactured from a number of varieties of computing items. Qualcomm made a number of enhancements all through Hexagon, and essentially the most notables are the 2X dimension enhance of the Tensor accelerator and the addition of a devoted energy supply system.
The foremost modifications in Hexagon have been made to handle the power to run extra advanced neural networks, significantly round transformer networks, to ship, amongst different issues, multi-language translation in real-time.
Qualcomm’s Micro Tile Inferencing is a brand new method that works by splicing neural networks into ‘tiles’ that shall be dispatched to obtainable compute items in Hexagon. Qualcomm didn’t go into a lot element, however in our expertise, tiling information is usually utilized to extend parallelism (course of the tiles in parallel to maximise {hardware} utilization) and probably enhance cache coherency and reminiscence bandwidth. Each could make a major influence on total efficiency.
Final 12 months, Qualcomm added the assist of blended precision INT8+INT16, (computerized change between INT8 and INT16 precisions) to its non-automatic blended precision expertise, named “all precisions assist” (INT8, INT16, FP16).
Within the new AI Engine, Qualcomm added the assist of 4-bit Integer precision (INT4) within the “all precisions” mode, so choose AI algorithms and neural community fashions can course of quicker throughout the Hexagon compute items. On high of that, INT4 permits Hexagon to run extra fashions concurrently (parallel computing).
Every AI mannequin might use a unique stage of precision, as some AI-driven duties will ship adequate outcomes utilizing an INT4 low stage of precision for quicker processing, whereas others might require increased ranges of precision reminiscent of INT8, INT16, FP16, and FP32 (Floating Level saved on 16 or 32 bits).
Qualcomm stated that the brand new AI Engine makes use of INT4 in “cinematic mode” for real-time blurring of the background (video bokeh), with no seen distinction in picture high quality. Beforehand related AI fashions used INT8.
4th technology Sensing Hub with a dual-AI processor
The Sensing Hub is the impartial low-power multi-core logic unit that features when the remainder of the SoC is asleep. It processes in real-time the contextual information streams reminiscent of voice, audio, sensors, and connectivity.
Final 12 months, Qualcomm launched a brand new function for the third technology Sensing Hub, the At all times-on Digital camera, which has now turn out to be the At all times Sensing Digital camera. The At all times-on Digital camera allowed the cellphone to robotically lock when the person doesn’t have a look at it or get up every time the person look on the sleeping cellphone.
With the brand new function, the digicam can acknowledge and course of a QR code positioned on the optical module when the smartphone is asleep (+show off), with the earlier processor, the cellphone needed to be turned on to handle a QR code.
Addition of a second AI processor with 50% extra reminiscence
Qualcomm has doubled the Sensing Hub’s AI computing capability by including a second AI processor. On high of that, 50% extra inside reminiscence is now obtainable. The additional reminiscence permits the system to run new AI fashions which have been beforehand unavailable but in addition higher variations of those that existed earlier than.
Qualcomm talked about 17 AI-based actions tracked by the brand new Sensing Hub, and those which caught our consideration are [human] Exercise Recognition, Voice Activation, and Eye-Monitoring.
Hexagon Direct Hyperlink and Cognitive ISP
Qualcomm launched Hexagon Direct Hyperlink for the primary time, a function that gives devoted bodily communication channels (bi-directional buses, in {hardware} lingo) to different logic blocks such because the GPU, the reminiscence, and the Spectra ISP.
Alongside Hexagon Direct Hyperlink, the chip producer introduced its first Cognitive ISP, a compute unit positioned inside Hexagon that works in reference to the Spectra ISP for quicker processing of the AI-driven imaging options.
Snapdragon Sight: upgraded digicam efficiency with Cognitive-ISP
Cognitive ISP for higher digicam efficiency
The Cognitive ISP, positioned within the Hexagon AI co-processor, communicates in real-time with the Spectra ISP that processes the pixels captured by the digicam. The Cognitive ISP executes the A number of Semantic Segmentation AI mannequin on the pictures despatched by the Spectra ISP and tells the Spectra to use totally different image-enhancing filters on the totally different recognized zones of the picture (as much as eight segments).
The Cognitive ISP can find boundaries and acknowledge objects in a picture reminiscent of faces, our bodies, pores and skin, garments, sky, vegetation, flowers, cats, seashores, buildings, and extra.
This new function, named Realtime Segmentation Filter, permits the system to exactly regulate colours, contrasts, and any features of pictures to every section of the picture, in real-time. Builders can choose totally different configurations and filters.
In different phrases, the Cognitive ISP is the mind, and the Spectra ISP is the muscle.
The brand new structure permits the digicam system to obtain the segmentation filter rather a lot quicker than earlier than, and processes AI filters in real-time, even earlier than the person presses the seize button, in line with Qualcomm.
Graphics and Gaming – Snapdragon Elite Gaming
On the Snapdragon Summit, Chris Patrick, SVP and GM, Cellular Handset, Qualcomm, stated that the brand new Adreno graphics processing unit (GPU) brings a 25% enhance in graphics rendering efficiency than the earlier technology whereas delivering 45% higher energy effectivity.
This implies the baseline efficiency will enhance for almost all apps that depend upon the GPU, like video games.
Adreno GPU Show
The Adreno subvisual system additionally contains the show, and Qualcomm introduced the assist of HDR Vivid, a brand new HDR normal launched in March 2021 by the China UHD Video Business Alliance (CUVA). HDR Vivid and Adaptive HDR are the newest additions to the opposite codecs already supported by Adreno GPU Show, together with HDR10, HDR10+, and Dolby Imaginative and prescient HDR.
Adreno GPU for video games
Adreno GPU would be the first cell platform to assist Unreal Engine 5’s Metahuman, a framework that enables recreation builders to create ultra-realistic people programmatically. Unreal Engine 5’s Metahuman characters have been beforehand solely usable in desktop video games. That’s a testomony to Qualcomm’s graphics software program’s maturity.
The brand new-gen Adreno helps Vulkan 1.3 and delivers a 30% Vulkan efficiency increase in comparison with the earlier technology.
Actual-time hardware-accelerated ray tracing
{Hardware} ray tracing was the star function of the present, because it pushes realism in video games to the subsequent stage. Bringing real-time ray tracing to cell gaming is a giant deal, as it’s compute-intensive, and solely highly effective gaming rigs can render the extra superior ray tracing methods at excessive framerate, like world illumination for the entire 3D scene.
On Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, recreation builders can combine primary ray tracing methods reminiscent of gentle shadows and correct reflections. The standard rendering strategies reminiscent of shadow maps yielded exhausting shadows as a result of they weren’t almost as correct in comparison with ray-traced shadows. Earlier reflections rendering strategies reminiscent of screen-space reflections have been restricted and couldn’t mirror an object that was off-screen. Ray tracing can.
In brief, ray tracing mimics the sunshine’s habits in the true world by following the trail of sunshine in a 3D world from the digicam by way of the objects within the scene and to an eventual mild supply.
Dave Durnil, World Head of Gaming & Snapdragon Studios, Qualcomm, confirmed us a cool demo from the favored recreation Justice On-line Cellular with the ray tracing on and off. We might clearly see the distinction, with ray tracing, the reflections within the water and on the curved objects have been sensible and we might observe the gentle shadows.
He advised us that Struggle Thunder Edge and Blue Reflection video games for Android will function Adreno-accelerated ray tracing.
Snapdragon Sound: dynamic spatial audio with head monitoring
Sarah McMurray, Employees Supervisor, Product Advertising, Qualcomm, launched Spatial Audio with dynamic head-tracking, a brand new function of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 that delivers extra sensible 3D sound with low motion-to-sound latency. Spatial Audio is a expertise devoted to immersive gaming and multimedia experiences.
Connectivity: 5G AI and Wi-Fi 7 assist
5G Modem-RF System
The 5G connectivity’s enhancements revolve round three new options. The primary is the mixing of a “5G AI Processor” compute unit contained in the 5G system. This basically helps with “tuning” the 5G modem parameters to acquire optimum efficiency in any state of affairs. It’s the closest you may get to having a (human) modem engineer tweaking issues always. AI might additionally assist with sign error correction to keep away from pointless information re-transmission.
Subsequent, the 4X provider aggregation additional enlarges the information pipeline obtainable for 5G communications, leading to increased peak downloads (a powerful 10 Gbps).
Lastly, it’s attainable to make use of two 5G SIM on the similar time, due to the 5G Twin SIM Twin Energetic function. It opens the door to much more information parallelism, however you would possibly find yourself paying two subscriptions in fact.
FastConnect Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth connectivity system
Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 comes with Wi-Fi 7, the upcoming normal for residence connectivity. Qualcomm makes use of extraordinarily superior methods reminiscent of high-band multi-link to make use of as a lot of the obtainable spectrum as attainable.
The corporate says its Wi-Fi can attain 5.8 Gbps and, extra importantly, maintain a latency beneath two milliseconds in a sustained method. Low latency might persuade wired ethernet customers to lastly change to Wi-Fi.
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