Today, Qualcomm is taking a big step to enable 5G distribution of 5G through the announcements of the new Snapdragon 480 low-end 5G SoC. The company had already hinted a few months ago that it would release a design of the Snapdragon 400 series with 5G compatibility, which would bring the new connection standard to the cheapest devices on the market, with the very high volume of $ 250.
The new Snapdragon 480 is an extremely impressive SoC, not only because of its 5G feature list, but also because it is in many ways a major performance improvement, including the use of two Cortex-A76 cores as the main CPUs – a very big leap in the family of the 400 series, which probably represents a big leap in performance for millions of low-cost devices in the market.
| Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 Series SoCs | |||||||
| SoC | Snapdragon 439 | Snapdragon 450 | Snapdragon 460 |
Snapdragon 480 |
|||
| SVE | 4x CA53 @ 2.2 GHz 4x CA53 |
8x CA53 @ 2.3 GHz |
4x Kryo 240 (CA73) @ 1.8 GHz 4x Kryo 240 (CA53) |
2x Cortex-A76 @ 2.0 GHz 6x Cortex-A55 |
|||
| GPU | Adreno 505 | Adreno 506 | Adreno 610 | Adreno 619 | |||
| ADV | Hexagon 536 | Hexagon 546 | Hexagon 683 | Hexagon 686 | |||
| ISP / Camera |
Spectra
21MP single cut |
Spectra
21MP single cut |
Spectra 340
36MP single cut |
Spectra 345
64MP single cut |
|||
| Encode / Decode |
1080p30 H.264 |
1080p60 H.264 & H.265 |
|||||
| Memory | 1x 32-bit @ 933MHz LPDDR3 7.4 GB / s |
2x 16-bit @ 1866MHz LPDDR4X 14.9 GB / s |
2x 16-bit @ 2133MHz LPDDR4X 17.0 GB / s |
||||
| Integrated modem | Snapdragon X6 LTE (Category 4/5) DL = 150 Mbps UL = 75 Mbps |
Snapdragon X9 LTE (Category 7/13) DL = 300 Mbps UL = 150 Mbps |
Snapdragon X11 LTE (Cat 12/13) DL = 390 Mbps UL = 150 Mbps |
Snapdragon X51
LTE 5G NR DL = 2500 Mbps |
|||
| Mfc. Process | 12nm LPP | 14nm LPP | 11nm LPP | 8nm LPP | |||
Starting with the CPU configuration, the new Snapdragon 480 is quite exciting for a low-end SoC, as it demolishes the older Cortex-A73 core of the previous generation Snapdragon 460 for some newer Cortex-A76- cores, which run at 2.0 GHz. It’s not the latest CPU IP on the market, but the leap from an A73 to an A76 is extremely large in terms of single-wire performance, and it’s significant user experience benefits for new devices with the Snapdragon 480. new SoC is a 2 + 6 CPU design, unlike the 4 + 4 setup of its predecessor – performance with multi-threading may not see such a big bump, but for this class of SoC I do not see it as a problem. The CPU configuration actually looks almost identical to what we saw on the Snapdragon 675 – these parts will be good indicators of what you can expect from the new 480 design.
On the GPU side, we see an upgrade from an Adreno 610 to an Adreno 619 – Qualcomm promises a 100% performance increase over its predecessor in the Snapdragon 460.
In terms of memory, it’s still a cheap 2x16b LPDDR4X SoC, but we’ve seen a slight increase in frequencies up to 2133MHz.
AI performance is said to be increased by 70%, partly due to the upgrade to a new Hexagon 686 DSP block with vector and tensor extensions. Interestingly on the camera side, Qualcomm quotes that they actually implemented a triple-ISP system, a feature that was just announced a few weeks ago in the flagship Snapdragon 888. The maximum sensor resolutions are in a 64MP for a single module, 25 + 13MP in dual camera mode, or 13 + 13 + 13MP in triple sensor recording mode.
Oddly enough, although the ISP features have expanded this generation, the video encoder is still only limited to 1080p60 H.264 / H.265. Qualcomm also announces that the display controller can reach a maximum of 1080 x 2520, although it supports the refresh rate up to 120Hz.
5G in the low-end
While the Snapdragon 480 would have been impressive just with the above specification upgrades, the new feature of the new generation SoC is the new modem subsystem that fully supports 5G NR.
The integrated X51 modem supports LTE up to 800Mbps downlink and 210Mbps uplink, as well as combined 5G sub-6 and mmWave throughput of up to 2500Mbps downlink and 660Mbps uplink. Sub-6 GHz spectrum capability drops to 100 MHz, but what’s very surprising to see is that although the chipset is a cheap inexpensive design, it still has mmWave features – albeit with a much smaller spectrum bandwidth compared to the larger flagship modems, which drop only 200MHz. As mmWave currently plays a key marketing role in the implementation of 5G, supporting the new technology is a must to win devices, although it is a bit of a contradictory feature to have low-cost costs- sensitive devices.
The X51 modem is capable of supporting all new key 5G technologies, supporting FDD and TDD stand-alone (SA) and non-standalone (NSA) 5G networks, as well as DSS (Dynamic Spectrum Sharing).
Then new chips are manufactured on Samsung’s 8nm process node, which should give it very good power efficiency.
Partner vendors included in Qualcomm’s announcement include HMD Global, OPPO and Vivo, which endorse the new chipset. More interestingly, OnePlus was also among the vendors to pay attention to the new chipset – perhaps this indicates the arrival of a new low-end OnePlus device?
Qualcomm expects the first Snapdragon 480 devices to be announced this month.