Qualcomm unveils Snapdragon 888 at the Snapdragon Tech Summit

Leading American semiconductor company, Qualcomm, has reportedly announced the official launch of its latest Snapdragon 888 microprocessor at the Snapdragon Tech Summit, providing a first look at the company’s next-gen flagship smartphone processor.

It is expected that the next wave of flagship smartphones for 2021 from enterprises like OnePlus, Samsung, Sony, LG, and more would be powered by the 888.

A first for Qualcomm’s top-line 8-series microprocessor chipsets, the new Snapdragon 888 would be making a significant improvement for 5G; wherein it will finally provide a 5G modem that is fully integrated, as opposed to the Snapdragon 865, unveiled last year.

The new microprocessor would feature the company’s X60 modem, which was announced earlier in 2020. The modem jumps to 5nm process to offer better power efficiency as well as enhancements for 5G based carrier aggregation through the sub-6GHz and mmWave spectrum bands.

The novel chip looks to provide some significant battery enhancements with regards to 5G, especially considering the new 5nm architecture as well as the power efficiency related gains attained through an integrated modem.

Apart from the 5G enhancements, the company also gave a sneak-peek at several other advances that are coming to Snapdragon 888, this also includes its sixth-generation AI Engine, which runs on a Qualcomm Hexagon processor that has been redesigned, promising a significant jump in power efficiency and performance for AI based tasks.

The new processor will also feature, what the company calls the most substantial upgrade to the performance of Qualcomm Adreno GPU. However, specifics on what type of improvements would be coming have not been announced yet.

Additionally, Qualcomm also previewed the newly added photography features Snapdragon 888 would be enabling, which includes the ability to capture roughly 120 photographs per second at a resolution of 12-megapixel, all thanks to the chipset’s updated ISP.

Source credit: https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/1/21678359/qualcomm-snapdragon-888-processor-first-look-5g-performance-ai-photography