Qualcomm’s latest midrange SoCs are finally here! The Snapdragon 660 and 630 SoCs are slated to replace the highly successful Snapdragon 653 and the Snapdragon 625 SoCs.
The Qualcomm 660 switches from the big.LITTLE architecture to a unified octa-core architecture. The new processor replaces the ARM Cortex A72 and A53 CPUs in favor of eight Kryo 260 CPUs. The GPU has also been updated to the Adreno 512. Qualcomm states that users would see a 20% improvement in compute performance and 30% improvement in graphics over its predecessor.
The Qualcomm Snapdragon 630 leverages eight ARM Cortex A53 Cores similar to the Snapdragon 625. Maximum configurable frequency has been raised from 2.0GHz to 2.2GHz. Just like the Snapdragon 660, the GPU has been updated to the Adreno 512. Qualcomm expects the Snapdragon 630 to see approximately 10% improvement in compute performance and 30% improvement in graphics over its predecessor.
The modem in both SoCs has been upgraded to the Qualcomm X12 LTE modem, the same one used in the snappy Snapdragon 835. The Snapdragon X12 modem supports LTE Cat. 12 downlink and LTE Cat 13 uplink. In addition, the Snapdragon 660 now supports dual-stream MIMO for faster Wifi performance and 3x20MHz carrier aggregation.
The new Snapdragon SoCs also includes a brand new Qualcomm Hexagon 680 DSP featuring vector extensions, support for Quick Charge 4, Snapdragon Neural Processing Engine SDK, and LPDDR4 support.
Expect these chips in the upcoming wave of midrange phones and tablets.
Source: Qualcomm
