Qualcomm has made the half-yearly refresh of its flagship chipset with Snapdragon 888 Plus. This was announced at the MWC 2021 event which kicked off today. And as a successor to Snapdragon 888, the Plus variant has got a higher peak clock speed and faster AI performance, and support for WiFi 6E thanks to Qualcomm FastConnect 6900 chip. Rest, everything seems unchanged on paper. It is still fabbed on a 5nm Samsung LPE process with a 1+3+4 core structure. It also comes with Snapdragon X60 5G Modem-RF integration.
This mid-cycle update will bring on new high-end phones from various brands like Asus (for an ROG device), Honor, Motorola, Vivo, and Xiaomi wielding the SD888+ chip. Qualcomm reveals that together Snapdragon 888 and 888+ will “power more than 130 designs announced or in development.”
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Snapdragon 888 Plus Specs
| Model | Snapdragon 888+ |
| Architecture | Samsung 5nm (5LPE) |
| Processor Cores | 1x Cortex-X1 @ 2.995GHz 1x1024KB pL2 3x Cortex-A78 @ 2.42GHz 3x512KB pL2 4x Cortex-A55 @ 1.80GHz 4x128KB pL2 4MB sL3 cache |
| GPU | Adreno 660 @ 840MHz |
| RAM | 4x 16-bit CH @ 3200MHz LPDDR5 / 51.2GB/s 3MB system level cache |
| DSP / NPU | Hexagon 780 32 TOPS AI |
| ISP/Camera | Triple 14-bit Spectra 580 ISP 1x 200MP or 84MP with ZSL or 64+25MP with ZSL or 3x 28MP with ZSL 4K video & 64MP burst capture |
| Encode/ Decode | 8K30 / 4K120 10-bit H.265 Dolby Vision, HDR10+, HDR10, HLG 720p960 infinite recording |
| Modem | X60 integrated (LTE Category 24/22) DL = 2500 Mbps 7x20MHz CA, 1024-QAM UL = 316 Mbps 3x20MHz CA, 256-QAM (5G NR Sub-6 + mmWave) DL = 7500 Mbps UL = 3000 Mbps |
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So, the Cortex-X1 prime core is now binned at a clock speed of 2.995GHz, which is around the 3GHz mark. The other major improvement is in the area of Artificial Intelligence. The Snapdragon 888+ harbors a 6th gen Qualcomm AI engine that delivers 32 TOPS. Now, we wonder how much of a performance difference this 5% gain in CPU and a 20% boost in neural network bring about. To know that, we will have to wait for the Snapdragon 888+ phones that are expected around Q3 2021.
