CES 2017: Qualcomm announces Snapdragon 835, the 10nm SoC with Kryo CPU, Quick Charge 4 and more

Qualcomm has announced the first 10nm system on chip and its next generation flagship with the Snapdragon 835. The Snapdragon 835 will be the first chipset to be made on the 10nm FinFET process node, for which Qualcomm has partnered with Samsung . The Snapdragon 835 is currently in production and commercial devices sporting it will be seen in the first half of 2017.

With the Snapdragon 835 chipset, Qualcomm aims to focus on delivering high end performance while ensuring power efficiency. This generation of Qualcomm chipsets will aim to push the envelope on next-gen entertainment experiences including VR/AR, connected cloud services, improved radio connectivity with the X16 LTE modem and more. Snapdragon 835 chipset will also be seen on Windows 10 based devices with support for legacy Win32 applications.

The Chipset

Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 chipset houses an octa-core processor with four Kryo 280 performance cores clocked at 2.45GHz and four Kryo 280 efficiency cores running at 1.9GHz. This will be paired with Adreno 540GPU with support for OpenGL ES 3.2, Vulkan and DX12. It will also support Google’s Daydream platform. The focus is to improve the immersive capabilities of devices with Snapdragon 835, while ensuring thermal limits and power efficiency are maintained.

It will also house the Qualcomm Hexagon 682 DSP for processing involving frameworks such as TensorFlow for machine learning and Halide for image processing. Qualcomm claims that the CPU, GPU, DSP and software framework will work optimally to ensure efficient usage of battery. OEMs and software developers which use machine learning will be able to enable rich experiences such as intelligent photography, stronger privacy protections, responsive and true-to-life AR/VR.

The Snapdragon 835 will also come with the integrated Snapdragon X16 LTE modem which has theoretical download and upload speeds of 1Gbps and 150Mbps respectively. On the wireless front, it will support 802.11ad Wi-Fi standard as well as Bluetooth 5.

Heterogeneous computing with image processing

Up to a single 32MP or two 16MP dual rear cameras will be supported by the Snapdragon 835 chipset. The image processor will be in the form of Qualcomm Spectra 180 ISPs with support for dual 14-bit ISPs, hybrid AF, optical zoom, hardware accelerated face detection, HDR video recording as well. Qualcomm has added a feature to improve digital zoom images, with a power zoom feature which will try and reduce the pixellations generally seen on zoomed in photographs. It will also support different kinds of camera modules such as the Sony IMX298 sensor, a Snapdragon Clear Sight camera module or even a Snapdragon optical zoom camera module.

Electronic Image Stabilisation (EIS 3.0) is expected to add in features to improve zooming while shooting videos, offer correction for gyro based pith, yaw and roll stutters and it is also expected to offer rolling-shutter correction (something that you face when panning the smartphone while shooting a video).

In the area of autofocus, Qualcomm has paid particular attention. Fresh from the success of the focussing system on the Google Pixel, Qualcomm will continue with phase-detect auto focus with dual photodiode AF support. This way every pixel will have a 1.14 micron pixel split into an image capture area and a phase detect area. The hybrid AF in Snapdragon 835 will tend to use contrast detect AF in well lit conditions, dual photo-diode AF in moderately lit conditions and laser or IR for active AF in low lit situations. This gives the autofocussing, a wider luminance palette to use its different AF techniques.

In terms of video capture, you can shoot up to 4K UltraHD content at 30fps and 4K UltraHD video playback at 60fps with support for H.264 as well as H.265 codecs.

One thing that you will see common with the camera features is the presence of the heterogenous computing approach on operations such as HDR, focussing and so on. The Hexagon DSP for instance is used to ensure an always on HDR mode, skin tone enhancements, enhanced AF and exposure levels using the face and body detection features. On the Snapdragon 835, the Spectra 180 ISPs, Hexagon DSP, Adreno 540 GPU and camera modules will work together to give you the best image output, says Qualcomm.

Immersive visuals will be a key area

In its presentation on the launch of the Snapdragon 835, Qualcomm spent a lot of time on improving the visual experience and making it more immersive. Qualcomm wants the Snapdragon 835 chipsets to be used in applications such as augmented reality, virtual reality, high end gaming and so on. For this purpose it will be using the Adreno 540 GPU in tandem with other processing units such as the display processing unit and video processing unit to ensure smooth stutter free display, and support for DirectX 12, Vulkan applications, wide-colour gamut, 4K HEVC 10-bit playback support and more. The idea is to have the correct processing unit, manage these high end tasks efficiently. Q-Sync capable displays will aim to keep the display refreshed at the same FPS rate as the GPU renders to give a stutter free experience while gaming.

Immersive audio is another area where Qualcomm is focussing on. The Qualcomm Aqstic is the block handling audio processing and will support object and scene-based audio and so on. Qualcomm will also release the Snapdragon VR SDK, Snapdragon VR 835 reference platform to ensure mode developer access in the realm of virtual reality.

Quick Charge 4

As we had mentioned earlier, the Snapdragon 835 chipset will be the first to support Quick Charge 4 technology. According to Qualcomm, the Quick Charge 4 will deliver almost 20 percent improvements in charging times and will also offer 30 percent improved power efficiency as compared to Quick Charge 3.0. Qualcomm claims that a mere 5 minutes of charging should give the user 5 hours worth of battery life. We will need to test this thoroughly when the Quick Charge 4 launches. The Qualcomm Symphony Manager will be monitoring not only task scheduling but also power management, so that the right task goes to the right processing unit. This will ensure efficient use of resources says Qualcomm.

Qualcomm Haven Security Platform

On the security front, Qualcomm Haven will be new platform for enhanced security platform for biometrics and device attestation. It will allow hardware based user authentication, device attestation and device security for use cases such as mobile payments, enterprise access and so on.

Snapdragon X16 LTE modem

Snapdragon 835 chipset will be housing the Snadragon X16 LTE modem, which will support multi Gigabit Wi-Fi and Gigabit LTE. It will also house the WCN 3990 integrated dual band Wi-Fi support. Qualcomm also said that it is working with partners to offer the 802.11ad standard when it comes out on mobile devices. The Gigabit LTE is being projected as an anchor to build upon the 5G mobile experience. Last year, Qualcomm had announced the Snapdragon X50 , its first 5G modem chipset.