Snapdragon classic processor inventory, these god U do you remember?

Qualcomm has just released a new generation of flagship processor Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, and the performance test results of Xiaomi 14 equipped with Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 have been released. The overall performance is still very good, it seems that this time Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 will continue the excellent performance of the previous two generations of Snapdragon 8+ and Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, and it is very likely to become another classic God U. Before fully embracing the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, we might as well take this opportunity to review the acclaimed processors in the history of Snapdragon and see if you have used the phones equipped with these god U?

Snapdragon 625

The Snapdragon 625 is Qualcomm's first 64-bit octa-core processor built on a 14nm process released on February 11, 2016. Although it belongs to the Snapdragon 600 series and is not a flagship positioning, it uses the latest generation of 14nm process to save 35% in power consumption compared to the previous generation Snapdragon 617. Its CPU architecture is also simple, equipped with eight Cortex-A53s clocked at 2GHz. Released in 2013, the A53 uses a dual-emission sequential execution architecture with a more streamlined circuit than out-of-order execution. The A53 is described by ARM's designers as the perfect form of an almost sequential execution structure. Together, the Snapdragon 625 has great advantages in energy efficiency.

Moreover, the performance of the Snapdragon 625 is not bad. Thanks to the advantages of CPU core count, its multi-core performance can even be compared to the flagship Snapdragon 820. Although the single-core performance is far inferior to the Snapdragon 820, its relative peak power consumption is even less than one-tenth of the Snapdragon 820, which perfectly meets the needs of general daily use.

Sex can be used, low power consumption, low heat generation, coupled with the low positioning of the Snapdragon 625, so it is also cheap, resulting in it being used by a large number of low-end models at that time. For example, the first model of Huawei's nova series, Huawei nova, the popular OPPO R9s, 360 N4S Snapdragon Edition, and Redmi 4 priced at only 899 yuan, and even the 2017 Redmi Note 4X, Redmi 5 Plus, Xiaomi Max2, etc. are all Snapdragon 625. The excellent performance on a number of thousand-yuan machines has also achieved the reputation of the Snapdragon 625 generation God U.

Snapdragon 835

After the famous Fire Dragon Snapdragon 810 and Snapdragon 820 are not good for two consecutive representatives, Qualcomm urgently needs to come up with a flagship processor that turns the tide, which is the Snapdragon 835 that we know as it was released on November 17, 2016, an SoC recognized as God U.

There are roughly three factors that make the success of the Snapdragon 835, one is that this generation uses Samsung's 10nm LPE process. At that time, TSMC was still in the 16nm process, so the Apple A10 and HiSilicon Kirin 960 of the same period that chose TSMC were all using TSMC's 16nm process. The Snapdragon 835 took the lead in using the Samsung 10nm process, and this generation of Samsung did not overturn, making the Snapdragon 835 ahead of the opponent in terms of process manufacturing.

The second is that the Snapdragon 835 returns to the ARM public version architecture. Although the Kryo 280 used by the Snapdragon 835 is Qualcomm's own name, it is completely different from the Kryo of the Snapdragon 820, which is based on the A73 and A53 customization, and this generation of Cortex-A73 architecture has an excellent energy efficiency ratio, far better than the previous generation of Snapdragon 810 and 820. And Qualcomm does not pull the main frequency very high, so the power consumption is very low. At the same time, its performance is not bad, even in the face of Exynos 8895's self-developed M2 architecture.

The third is to further optimize the GPU control power consumption. In the case that the Adreno 530 GPU of the Snapdragon 820 is already very strong, Qualcomm has not changed much on the Adreno 540 of the Snapdragon 835, but focuses on optimizing and improving, making the performance increase by about 25%, and the peak power is only 3.79W. In the same period, the opponent's performance in GPU power consumption was not satisfactory, which highlighted the calmness of the Snapdragon 835 GPU.

The success of the Snapdragon 835 has also created a number of classic models, such as the Samsung Galaxy S8, Galaxy Note 8, the typical nail household Xiaomi 6, OnePlus 5, OnePlus 5T and so on.

Snapdragon 660

A year after the release of the Snapdragon 625, Qualcomm released a mid-range God U on May 8, 2017. Compared with the previous generation of Snapdragon 653, the process of Snapdragon 660 has also been upgraded from 28nm to 14nm, which has significantly improved performance and power consumption, CPU performance has increased by 20%, and Adreno512 GPU has increased by 30% compared to the previous 510.

Because the positioning is higher than the Snapdragon 625, Qualcomm introduced functional modules and technologies that were previously only available in the flagship platform of the Snapdragon 800 series, including the integration of Kryo CPU and Spectra ISP in the Snapdragon 600 series for the first time, as well as support for some new functions, such as machine learning, neural networks, etc.

Compared with the flagship at that time, the Snapdragon 835, which was also Shen U, the two were similar in CPU architecture, the difference was that the Snapdragon 660 cut the L2 cache, the main frequency was lower, and the overall performance was not as good as the Snapdragon 835. However, the Snapdragon 660 can achieve considerable results in energy efficiency when the process is not as good as the Snapdragon 835, which shows its strong energy efficiency.

Under the full inheritance of the advantages of the Snapdragon 625 and the weakness of competitors in the same period, the Snapdragon 660 is equipped by a number of mid-range models, such as OPPO R11, vivo X20, X21, Nut Pro2, Xiaomi Mi 8 Youth Edition, Meizu 15, etc., creating another mid-range Shen U reputation.

Snapdragon 710

In 2018, Qualcomm inserted a Snapdragon 700 series between the original Snapdragon 800 and 600 series, and the first product in the series was the Snapdragon 710. Its large core and small core are based on the magic modification of the A75 and A55 architecture, respectively, and the Snapdragon 845 is the first large and small core architecture of ARM to support DynamlQ technology, and also uses the same 10nm process as the Snapdragon 845. However, the two are still different in specific specifications, for example, the Snapdragon 845 is a 4-core plus 4-small core architecture, the Snapdragon 710 is 2 large cores plus 6 small cores, and the cache part of the Snapdragon 710 is also castrated. It is somewhat similar to the situation of the previous Snapdragon 660 and Snapdragon 835, so some people also see the Snapdragon 710 as the youth version of the Snapdragon 845.

Thanks to advances in process and architecture, the Snapdragon 710's single-core CPU performance is 21% higher than the Snapdragon 660 at 9% lower peak power consumption, and the new Adreno616 GPU performance is significantly improved by 53%, while peak power consumption is reduced by 25%. Excellent energy efficiency performance has also attracted the use of a number of models, such as Xiaomi Mi 8 SE, vivo's first upgraded full-screen flagship vivo NEX, Meizu 16X, OPPO R17 Pro and so on.

However, compared with the Snapdragon 625 and Snapdragon 660, the Snapdragon 710 is not so famous. Because the Qualcomm flagship Snapdragon 845, 855, etc. at the same time did not repeat the serious fever phenomenon of Snapdragon 810 and 820, it seems that Snapdragon 710 is not so prominent.

Snapdragon 865

Snapdragon 865, released on December 4, 2019, continues to be stable on the basis of the previous generation Snapdragon 855, and the CPU architecture is still a three-cluster design of large core + 3 medium core + 4 small core, the difference is the introduction of A77 architecture, and the L3 cache in DSU is doubled to 4MB. In the case of a small upgrade of the process technology to TSMC N7P, the CPU single-core performance has increased by 22%, while the power consumption has been slightly reduced. On the GPU side, performance has increased by 25%, and power consumption has decreased by nearly 10%.

However, the Snapdragon 865 also has obvious shortcomings, that is, it does not integrate a baseband chip, but uses an external Qualcomm X55 baseband, which causes its battery life to decline rapidly when using 5G, and does not support dual-SIM 5G. In addition, the external baseband will also squeeze the internal space of the mobile phone, resulting in the mobile phone can not be thin, if forced thin, you must sacrifice other specifications such as battery or heat dissipation.

It can be said that from the Snapdragon 865 itself, it does not seem to be a particularly good SoC, but from the previous God U judgment, we can also see that in addition to its own hard power, it depends largely on the foil of teammates/opponents. The fire dragon reputation of Snapdragon 888 and Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 after Snapdragon 865 has been learned too many times in the mobile phone circle in the past two or three years. Under the contrast of the Snapdragon 888 and Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, the Snapdragon 865 can only be forced to be a god, not only its own vitality is extremely strong, but also the next generation of Snapdragon 870 has been in service to this day.

Snapdragon 8+/8 Gen 2

The two SoCs of Snapdragon 8+ and Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 have been seen too many times on mobile phones in the last year. At first, after two consecutive generations of Snapdragon 888 and Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 overturned, the half-generation upgraded Snapdragon 8+ released in the middle of last year generally did not have much expectations. But who would have thought that the Snapdragon 8+ produced by TSMC suddenly got rid of the title of fire dragon, and with excellent performance and energy efficiency ratio, it turned over directly, and the high-end SoC market that was originally encroached upon by MediaTek regained its hegemony. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 released at the end of the year further continued the strength of the Snapdragon 8+, and the market avoided Qualcomm Snapdragon from buying a mobile phone two or three years ago, and suddenly returned to buying a mobile phone to look for Qualcomm Snapdragon.

And this time, after the release of Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, Qualcomm did not let the Snapdragon 8+ be directly delisted, but reduced its frequency and sold it at a lower price, creating a gameplay that downgraded the previous generation of flagships into the mid-range market. Together with the birth of the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2, which should actually be regarded as an 8-series processor, the birth of the short-lived god U reversed Qualcomm's previous lack of competition in the mid-range market. Now that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 has been released, then the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 may also be downfrequency for use on a new batch of mid-range models, and the Snapdragon 8+ may continue to enter the tablet field, and these two processors must be with us for a long time.

In addition to the above processors, which other Snapdragon SoCs do you think can be called classics, welcome to share your views in the comment area.