[ad_1]
Today Qualcomm is revealing a set of benchmark results for the new Snapdragon 888 SoC that is set to power next year’s flagship Android devices. Typically, as in previous years, we would have had the opportunity to compare Qualcomm’s reference designs ourselves during the chipset launch event, or a few weeks later at CES; however, due to obvious circumstances, this was not possible this year.
As an alternative, Qualcomm shares with the press a set of benchmark results on its new Snapdragon 888 reference design phone. Typically the point of the press evaluating the devices themselves is that it adds an independent verification of the ratings of reference. This time we will have to make a small leap of faith in the accuracy of Qualcomm’s numbers; of course we still hope that the figures are accurate and reproducible on commercial devices.
Unfortunately, because most of our most interesting mobile test set around SoCs is actually made up of custom internal benchmarks, that means these won’t be in today’s fairly short coverage.
Among the benchmarks Qualcomm has listed are AnTuTu, GeekBench, GFXBench Aztec Normal and Manhattan 3.0, Ludashi AiMark, AITuTu, MLPerf, and UL Procyon. We only really run a subset of those benchmarks in our coverage, so I’ll focus on the basics with GeekBench, GFXBench, and Procyon.
Starting with GeekBench 5, which is generally in my opinion a good overall performance benchmark for CPUs and generally scales in line with SPEC, we see the first-time use of the Cortex-X1 cores from the new Snapdragon 888 in action.
The single-threaded performance score has increased from 919 on the Snapdragon 865 to 1135 on the new chipset, indicating a 23.5% performance increase over its direct predecessor. This is somewhat in line with Qualcomm’s promised performance increase of 25% and generally what we expected given Qualcomm’s implementation of the Cortex-X1 on the new chipset. As a reminder, the new X1 cores are clocked at 2.84 GHz, the same clock rate as the A77 in the S865, but a lower clock rate than the 3.09 GHz A77 cores in the Snapdragon 865+. Here, of course, the performance advantage of the new chip is only 15.4%, which doesn’t sound all that exciting.
The multi-threaded performance of the new chip is 16.9% better than its predecessors. This was actually a bit weirder to see, as I was expecting bigger improvements. Thinking more about it, I think it makes sense: the new Cortex-A78 cores that we found being used as the 3x intermediate cores of the new SoC had only promised a 7% IPC advantage over the predecessors. Qualcomm increased its L2 size from 256KB to 512KB, but otherwise left the clock rates unchanged at 2.42GHz. Coupled with the unchanged 1.8GHz 4x Cortex-A55 cores, I guess the overall performance of the clusters hasn’t really changed much, with the main X1 core being this generation’s hero of the show.
Moving on to the GPU, the new Snapdragon 888 features the new Adreno 660, which promises a 35% performance increase. Qualcomm released the GFXBench Aztec Normal and Manhattan 3.0 scores. I had moved to Manhattan 3.1 a long time ago and I don’t even run 3.0 anymore, so I don’t have comparison scores to Qualcomm’s 169fps figure, but we did run Aztec Normal.
At this benchmark, Qualcomm’s announced 86fps score is actually nearly 55% better than previous-generation Snapdragon 865 devices. This could be an outlier score or it could also be a sign of a good use of the chipset’s new increase in LPDDR5-6400 bandwidth: Qualcomm said that this generation the GPU will be able to emphasize that part of the chip much more.
While the Snapdragon 888 doesn’t seem to match the peak performance scores of the iPhones A13 or A14, the end result will depend on the power consumption of the chip. If this hits 4-4.5W, then most flagship phones in 2021 will likely be able to maintain this peak performance figure and allow Qualcomm to reclaim Apple’s mobile performance crown. If the chip is accelerated by a more significant amount, it may not accomplish that feat, but honestly, that doesn’t matter too much – the generational leap against 2020 phones would still be immense, and by far one of the biggest advances in the world. GPU performance has been Qualcomm. able to achieve to date.
In terms of AI benchmarks, Qualcomm didn’t really present anything on the same subject as us, so this could be a good opportunity to add UL’s new Procyon benchmark to the suite.
The benchmark can run on various SoC accelerators and can also take advantage of custom TensorFlow delegates, such as Samsung’s EDEN framework.
The new Snapdragon 888 here is posting exceptionally good performance, showing almost 3 times the score of the Snapdragon 865+, which is actually beyond the actual performance rate increases of the new Hexagon 780. The new Hexagon is a fully IP new and practically simple The biggest improvement of the entire Snapdragon 888 as it promises great achievements in performance and power efficiency, not only against previous generation Snapdragons, but also against competing designs that do not yet have a DSP / hardware block Flexible ML in your SoCs.
Surprisingly, Qualcomm also released MLPerf results on the new chip, the Android app is fresh out of the oven, and it also gives us a new standardized test that is more aligned across the industry:
The new Snapdragon 888 is showing huge leaps in performance compared to its predecessor, with increases of up to 4 times in some of the tests. Again, this goes well beyond the theoretical computational performance improvements of the execution units of the IP blocks, and is most likely tied to the new memory architecture of the new Hexagon block as a whole.
Good first impressions overall – waiting for the first devices
Today’s disclosures of these benchmark scores strengthen our initial first impressions of the Snapdragon 888 during launch a few weeks ago.
On the CPU side, we’re seeing good improvements, although Qualcomm is keeping things comparatively conservative relative to improvements in the other aspects of the SoC. The new GPU appears to have the advertised performance, perhaps even better. The missing piece to the puzzle is power consumption, and if it ends up being competitive, Qualcomm has a chance to regain the mobile performance crown.
Finally, the new Hexagon really stood out as the most exciting new piece of hardware in the Snapdragon 888, and these new performance figures really validate that initial impression with really tremendous performance leaps.
While this really wasn’t a performance preview per se of how we did in previous years, and we have to trust Qualcomm that the figures will end up being playable on commercial devices without any bad surprises, it looks like 2021 will be another solid year of running. for Qualcomm, and it looks like the Snapdragon 888 won’t disappoint.
