QUALCOMM

Meet the new Snapdragon 690: 5G and the 8nm Cortex-A77 for medium-sized farmers

Qualcomm has expanded its portfolio of 5G single-chip systems to the Snapdragon 600 series with the introduction of the new Snapdragon 690 platform. This is a significant update for the 600 series: not just cellular features, but also other important building blocks.
Although the Snapdragon 690 kept the configuration of the powerful and energy-efficient 2 + 6 cores, Qualcomm was able to integrate the latest high-performance Cortex-A77 cores, which led to a 20% increase in performance due to improvements in architecture. The clock frequencies remain the same as other recent models in the 600 series: 2 GHz for Cortex-A77 and 1.7 GHz for Cortex-A55.
As for the graphics accelerator, here a new Adreno 619L unit is integrated into the crystal, which led to an even greater increase in performance - up to 60% compared to the previous generation of Snapdragon 675. Unfortunately, the memory used is the same: LPDDR4X with support for two 16-bit channels. However, this is sufficient for the bandwidth requirements in this segment.
Qualcomm also offers some new multimedia features that have been migrated to the 600 series of more next-generation chips. The Spectra iSP image processor is capable of capturing photographs at resolutions up to 192 megapixels; or 48 megapixels in multi frame noise reduction; or simultaneous shooting with 32 and 16 megapixel sensors. The chip also supports a 10-bit capture and display pipeline that allows you to record and play back video in 4K HDR (unfortunately, nothing is said about 60 frames / s).



One of the main features of the Snapdragon 690 is, of course, 5G support. The built-in X51 modem adds support for international bands with a frequency below 6 GHz and the speed reaches 2500 Mbps for download and 1200 Mbps for download. Apparently, the chip does not support operation in the millimeter wave range, which makes sense, given the price range and the absence of mmWave in most markets.
The Snapdragon 690 can also offer advanced machine learning features. Among the manufacturers that manufacture smartphones based on the Snapdragon 690 are HMD Global, LG Electronics, Motorola, SHARP, TCL and Wingtech. The new chip is expected to appear on devices from multiple vendors in the second half of the year.

AVnews