Qualcomm presents successor Snapdragon 800-soc
Qualcomm has presented the successor to its Snapdragon 800-soc. The Snapdragon 805 has four Krait 450 processor cores at a maximum of 2.5GHz and contains a new Adreno 420 GPU. Smartphones with this processor will be released within half a year.
The Snapdragon 805 is mainly intended for controlling 4k screens, say Qualcomm. The soc, presumably with type number MSM8974ac, is still a quadcore. Qualcomm previously called octacore processors for phones craziness.
The four processor cores have a slightly modified core, Krait 450. Qualcomm has not yet announced the exact changes, but the changes are probably not major compared to the Krait 400 from the Snapdragon 800. The Snapdragon 800 is included in the Nexus 5, Samsung Galaxy Note 3, Sony Xperia Z1, LG G2 and Nokia Lumia 1520.
The Snapdragon 805 also contains an Adreno 420 GPU, which adds tesselation, among other things. Qualcomm claims that this GPU is 40 percent faster than the Adreno 330 GPU in the Snapdragon 800. Moreover, Qualcomm does not say whether the Snapdragon 805 at 4k is capable of the same graphic performance as the Snapdragon 800 on a full-HD screen. The memory bandwidth is double that of the Snapdragon 800.
The Snapdragon 805 will appear in smartphones from the first half of next year. The first smartphones with this chip have probably already been announced. Chinese manufacturer Gionee recently announced the Elife E7 with the Qualcomm MSM8974ac. It has a maximum clock speed of 2.5 GHz. The Snapdragon 800 has model numbers MSM8974 and MSM8974ab and runs at a maximum of 2.3GHz.
Qualcomm also fails to mention many details in its announcement. For example, it is unknown whether Qualcomm is still sticking to the 28nm process that it has been using for a year and a half. The type of memory is also unknown.
| Core | Krait 450 | Krait 400 | Cyclone | Cortex A15 |
| cores | 4 | 4 | 2 | 5 |
| Clock speed | 2.5GHz | 2.3GHz | 1.4GHz | 1.9GHz |
| GPU | Adreno 420 | Adreno 330 | PowerVR G6430 | ULP GeForce 72 core |
| Memory | 25.6GB/s | 12.8GB/s | 12.8G/ps | 14.9GB/s |