On December 1, Qualcomm officially released a new generation of Snapdragon 8 mobile platform at the Snapdragon Technology Summit. Official data shows that the overall CPU performance of Snapdragon 8 has increased by 20% and power consumption has decreased by 30%. If 20% is a normal iterative upgrade, then a more dramatic upgrade of snapdragon 8 has been reflected in the GPU. As a top priority in Qualcomm's product design, Qualcomm has brought unprecedented CPU upgrades to users. Qualcomm's upgrade of GPU performance and energy efficiency to the new generation of Snapdragon 8 mobile platforms conveys a signal that GPUs are playing an increasingly prominent role in smartphones and will gain the same important position as CPUs.
Qualcomm said, "This is the generation we have ever seen the largest increase in graphics processing power for the gaming experience. "With the completely redesigned Adreno GPU architecture, its graphics rendering capabilities have been improved by 30 percent and energy efficiency has increased by 25 percent during gaming. At the same time, Qualcomm has made a number of optimizations for the Vulkan graphics driver, and the performance of mobile games has increased by up to 60%.
Once upon a time, the CPU firmly controlled the position of the computing core in the smartphone, providing computing power for various processes running on the mobile phone, which directly determined the performance of the smartphone. With the advent of the boom in 5G, AI, and mobile gaming, IT is already difficult to load the increasingly heavy graphics processing requirements with CPUs alone. In recent years, Android upstream manufacturers represented by Qualcomm have continued to exert efforts to elevate the status of GPUs to a new height.
The GPU (Graphics Processing Unit graphics processor) acts like the graphics card in a PC but is not exactly the same, and it is highly integrated with graphics processing components. For GPUs, its performance is determined by the polygon generation rate and pixel rendering capabilities. Just as the PC GPU is to the CPU, in the early stage of the development of smart phones, the CPU undertakes almost all the computing tasks required by the mobile phone, and everything requires the participation of the CPU, which requires chip manufacturers to upgrade the CPU's process and the number of transistors. Today's mobile GPUs can help the CPU share the computational load while being able to target graphics tasks. In addition to sharing the task of graphics processing, GPUs also provide assistive processing functions for video playback, video recording, and taking pictures. An undeniable trend is that compared with the CPU, the importance of the current GPU is becoming more and more obvious, and the performance improvement of the GPU has also brought about the upgrade of the overall performance of the mobile phone SoC.
At present, mobile phones have been more than just positioned as communication devices. With the diversification of mobile phone functions, users' requirements for mobile phone performance are also rising. At the software level, upgrades in games, videos, communications, etc. all rely on the improvement of computing power. For users, the most direct feeling brought about by the improvement of mobile GPU performance is the upgrade of the game screen. In the period of initial development of mobile games, games such as "Glory of kings" and "PUBG: Stimulating the Battlefield" of that year, even mid-range smartphones can provide a relatively smooth experience, but now with the increasing volume of mobile games, the addition of new features such as 90 and 120fps high frame rate modes and extremely clear resolution has brought challenges to mobile phone performance, especially GPUs. Large-scale games with more than a dozen GIBs, such as "Crash 3", "Original God", "Nemea Legend: Mountains of Light" and other games have clear picture quality and explosive special effects, and ordinary chip GPUs are simply difficult to load. If you choose to play with low image quality, although you can solve the problem of screen stuttering to a certain extent, you can't enjoy the excellent scenes provided by game manufacturers, and the game experience is also greatly reduced. The complexity of user mobile phone usage scenarios also puts forward new requirements for GPUs.
To be clear, Qualcomm Adreno GPUs can bring users both performance and energy efficiency improvements, which in turn brings better graphics quality and higher rendering efficiency, resulting in better game graphics and video effects. Qualcomm's Snapdragon Elite Gaming for games is a multi-core performance boost such as Adreno GPUs, bringing players more than 50 technical features. On snapdragon 8, the new Snapdragon Elite Gaming feature, the Adreno Frame Motion Engine, will subvert players' game perceptions. By leveraging historical frame data and GPU optimization of motion estimation, games that support this feature can generate more frames, allowing games to run at double frame rates while maintaining nearly the same power consumption — spending the same power consumption for a double silky smooth gaming experience that is simply the "black technology" that FPS, RPG, and racing gamers love. In addition, snapdragon Elite Gaming stereoscopic rendering features further optimize particle graphics effects such as smoke to achieve a new level of fidelity, and smoke can float and flow in the environment, bringing a terminal-level experience. Players will be more immersive and immersive when playing on Snapdragon 8 devices.
But that's not all. When users want to adjust their settings to meet their unique needs. For these hardcore players, Qualcomm has chosen to give users the right to control the GPU, giving more autonomy to users. The new Qualcomm Adreno GPU adds a control panel that allows players to customize key GPU parameters in their favorite games and play the way they like them – including but not limited to resolution, frame rate, anti-aliasing and many other game features; Not only that, but millions of users can also download updatable Adreno GPU drivers to improve game performance, add new game features, and improve battery life. When more devices equipped with Snapdragon 8 are released, it is easier for each game manufacturer to carry out special optimizations to achieve the collective effect of the game market.
Since the game manufacturers are mentioned, they have to mention the Qualcomm GPU upgrade as their help. Since it is based on the self-developed Qualcomm Adreno GPU, there is no need to rely on ARM or other vendors to provide GPU drivers. Qualcomm has gained the "talent" of special adaptation and optimization directly driven by mobile phone manufacturers and game developers, which means that Qualcomm Adreno GPUs can support exclusive game development tools and optimizations, so that models equipped with Snapdragon chips can get better game screen performance and control experience.
Last year, Qualcomm introduced Variable Resolution Rendering (VRS), which was first implemented in a mobile game. It is also this feature that allows developers to better allocate graphics resources, reduce GPU workload, bring significant performance and power consumption improvements, and do not need to reduce the visual effects of the game, which is a blessing for developers. On snapdragon 8, the new VRS Pro (Variable Resolution Rendering Advanced Edition) already supports image-based VRS, and also supports developers to set rendering resolutions based on screen position, providing game developers with finer grain control when tuning game performance, and without reducing visual quality, providing more operability for game developers.
Some of our daily playable games include Snapdragon 8 and the new Adreno GPU. Snapdragon 8 optimizes the GPU driver layer for a variety of complex graphics effects such as the 120fps high frame rate mode of "Glory of Kings" and the 90fps mode of "Peace Elite"; Optimized for CPU multi-threading, occlusion culling, delayed rendering, vertex shader load under the highest configuration of "Original God" 60fps, etc., it can greatly reduce the power consumption of the game when running on the Snapdragon mobile platform, and improve the frame rate stability; Variable Resolution Rendering (VRS) technology was used in the Ares Remnant game, improving performance while reducing power consumption.
The positive feedback of these optimizations is that game developers are also more likely to obtain first-hand information about user experience and game operation through Qualcomm, launch better game optimization solutions, and use higher specification GPUs to achieve particles, details, textures, special effects, etc. that were previously difficult to achieve on mobile devices, promoting the development and progress of the mobile game industry. In addition to game manufacturers, OEMs can also get improvements from the continuous upgrading of Adreno GPUs. In the years of cooperation, Qualcomm and Xiaomi, iQOO, ROG, Black Shark, Red Devil and other partners have been optimized for the different needs of their respective products.
Overall, Qualcomm's technology investment in GPUs has led the direction of the entire industry and continues to drive the development and growth of the ecosystem. Since 2013, Qualcomm has introduced a new naming method and hierarchy for Snapdragon processors, and launched different series for mobile phones with different positioning, that is, Snapdragon 200, 400, 600, 800 series. As the flagship series, the GPU on the Snapdragon 8 Series is also constantly upgrading.
In 2013, the Snapdragon 800 was equipped with a Qualcomm Adreno 330 GPU, which supports an immersive and stunning 3D gaming experience and a sensitive and complex user interface; In 2017, the Snapdragon 835 is equipped with Qualcomm Adreno 540 GPU, supporting OpenGL ES 3.2, full OpenCL 2.0, Vulkan and DX12, further knocking on the door of the world. The Snapdragon 845 released at the end of the same year came with the Qualcomm Adreno 630 GPU, which is an important part of the powerful AI processing capabilities implemented in conjunction with the CPU and DSP. In 2018, Qualcomm released the Snapdragon 855, and the new Qualcomm Adreno 640 GPU brings up to 20% faster graphics rendering speeds, while continuing to maintain industry-leading energy efficiency per watt. Vulkan 1.1, High Dynamic Range (HDR), and Physically Based Rendering (PBR) supported by Adreno Graphics take the gaming experience to a whole new level; The 2019 flagship Snapdragon 865 is no stranger to everyone, and upgrading to Qualcomm Adreno 650 GPU makes it more powerful. When the time comes to 2020, the Snapdragon 888 will upgrade the GPU to the Qualcomm Adreno 660 GPU while integrating the 5G modem and RF system, and the graphics rendering speed will be up to 35% higher than the previous generation platform.
This year, the new generation of Snapdragon 8 mobile platform with the new Qualcomm Adreno GPU debuted on the stage, redefining the mobile GPU experience. Looking back at the development history of mobile phone GPUs, Qualcomm occupies a pivotal position in it, and it is precisely because of Qualcomm's persistence that we now have the opportunity to experience such stunning pictures and graphics on Android smartphones. There is no doubt that GPUs have become the most critical part of the further upgrade of mobile SoCs.