Qualcomm on Tuesday unveiled the Snapdragon 888 flagship platform processor at the Snapdragon Technology Summit 2020, which will support the next generation of flagship smartphones.
The Snapdragon 888 is the first major 5G improvement for Qualcomm's top-of-the-line 8-series chipset. It offers a fully integrated 5G modem, unlike last year's Snapdragon 865, which contained a separate modem chip internally.
The 888 sounds like Fafafa (fortune, fortune, fortune) in Chinese, which means wealth and prosperity in Chinese culture, so it should be very popular with Chinese handset makers.
The Snapdragon 888 features 1 x 2.84GHz (ARM's latest Cortex X1 core) + 3 x 2.4GHz (Cortex A78) + 4 x 1.8GHz (Cortex A55). It is powered by the Adreno 660 GPU with X60 5G modem baseband and supports WiFi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2.
The Snapdragon 888 features Qualcomm's Snapdragon X60 modem, announced earlier this year, which uses a 5nm process for better power efficiency and improved 5G carrier aggregation across the mmWave and sub-6GHz frequency spectrum.
It supports multiple SIM cards worldwide, SA, NSA, and dynamic spectrum sharing. Between the new 5nm architecture and the power efficiency gains from the integrated modem, the new chip appears to offer some substantial battery life improvements in 5G.
In addition to the 5G improvements, Qualcomm also previewed several other advances for the Snapdragon 888, including a sixth-generation AI engine and a second-generation sensing hub that promises a big jump in performance and power efficiency for AI tasks.
On the gaming front, Qualcomm will introduce the third-generation Snapdragon Elite Gaming, which will also bring "the most significant upgrade to Qualcomm Adreno GPU performance" with support for 144fps gaming and desktop-grade rendering.
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