Qualcomm has offered details on his blog about his upcoming chip for high-end smartphones, the Snapdragon 820. This processor, optimized for heterogeneous computing, have a Symphony System Manager or Symphony System Manager, in English. In more common parlance, the idea is that chip parts work better together for higher performance and lower power consumption.
The truth is that, for a long time, mobile processors have had sophisticated hardware to manage the power and performance of their cores, whether they are CPU, GPU or DSP. But for now, Qualcomm doesn’t offer any more details on how it plans to do it and how its upcoming Snapdragon 820 will differ from previous chips.
What is clear is that Snapdragon 820 will be manufactured using the modern 14nm process and that you will have 4 custom CPU cores called Kyro, with speeds up to 2GHz.
The manufacturer ensures that the new chip double the performance and energy savings of its predecessor, the Snapdragon 810. And that will have the sophisticated system manager, which will manage the performance of most parts of the chip (the CPU cores, the GPU, the image processor, the memory system, etc.).
As PCWorld.com explains, the expression “twice the performance and energy efficiency” of the chip. The manufacturer is not referring to the performance of the CPU, but of the chip as a whole, so it is not known if they are talking about the performance that 3D games will achieve, the image processor or some combination of parts that work in a optimal configuration.
Similarly, twice the “energy efficiency” does not mean twice the battery life. Energy efficiency means “how much work can be done with a certain amount of energy”. That is, if it is twice as fast and uses the same amount of energy, it is already twice as efficient.
The new ones phones, that incorporate this processor are scheduled for early 2016.
