This issue contains high-profile announcements from Qualcomm, Samsung and Nvidia, as well as useful information on the Android Oreo GO Edition.
Snapdragon Tech Summit 2017
The summit of the famous chipmaker was held last week, and it's time to take stock of it. First, I'd like to point out that the strong partnership between Qualcomm and Xiaomi has been demonstrated again.
On the very first day of the summit, the head Xiaomi Lei Jun (雷军) took the stage and said that the new premium smartphones of the company will be equipped with the Snapdragon 845 chipset. Despite all doubts about the efficiency of the business Xiaomi, the company is confidently moving forward, delighting its apologists with low prices for high technologies.
The main news, of course, were new details about the Snapdragon 845 chipset. The main directions in its development were:
- eXtended reality (XR ) (The set of all technologies associated with virtual space and interaction with it. That is, XR = AR + VR + AV. – Note A.N.)
- Artificial Intelligence (AI )
- Faster next-generation connectivity
- New Security Coprocessor (SPU)
Don McGuire, VP and Chief Marketing Officer at Qualcomm, spoke most vividly about this:
XR
The flagship chipset is equipped with the new Qualcomm Spectra ™ 280 Integrated Image Signal Processing (ISP) and Qualcomm® Adreno ™ 630 visual processing engine. These all-new systems deliver lifelike video capture and superior photography for flagship devices. The Snapdragon 845 offers 64x the dynamic range of the Snapdragon 835, specifically for video playback on Ultra HD Premium displays, an industry first. This massive increase in color information includes 10-bit color depth for over one billion color shades, the difference will be visible when playing 4K / Ultra HD movies on devices created under Rec. 2020 (almost all modern TVs and monitors. – Note A.N.). In addition to advancing video capture, the new Adreno 630 visual architecture subsystem is changing the way we think about entertainment, education, and social interactions, making them more immersive and intuitive. The Adreno 630 is designed to bring new XR ideas to life that span virtual, augmented and mixed reality. Snapdragon 845 is the first mobile platform to enable 6 Levels of Freedom (6DoF) (Wiki Help) with Simultaneous Localization and Display (SLAM) (Wiki Help) – for features such as obstacle detection and virtual object interaction with it. In addition, the Snapdragon 845 introduces 'Adreno foveation' technology for the first time, which significantly reduces power consumption, improves image quality and improves the performance of XR applications.
AI
Snapdragon 845 brings 3x improvement in overall AI performance. This turns your mobile device into a complete personal assistant, expands and simplifies the way you take photos and videos, enhances VR games, and makes voice interaction with your smartphone completely natural. AI в Snapdragon 845 упрощает работу с интеллектуальными помощниками (ПО, такие как Алиса и ее подруги. – Прим. A.N.) за счет лучшего распознавания ключевых слов и обработки вашего голоса (фильтрация и усиление звука) в сложных условиях, благодаря применению аудиокодека Qualcomm Aqstic ™ (WCD9341) and low-power audio subsystem. This allows you to operate your device all day long using only your voice. In addition to existing support for TensorFlow and Facebook Caffe / Caffe2 frameworks, the Snapdragon Neural Processing Engine (NPE) SDK now supports Tensorflow Lite and the new Open Neural Network Exchange (ONNX), allowing developers to leverage off-the-shelf deep machine learning solutions including Caffe2, CNTK and MxNet. Snapdragon 845 also supports API Android NN from Google (API for interacting with neural networks, available starting from Android 8.1 and up. – Note A.N.).
Communication
The Snapdragon 845 is equipped with the most advanced wireless technology available. The most interesting is the second generation Gigabit LTE module – the Snapdragon X20 LTE modem. Скорость передачи данных и минимальные задержки позволяют наслаждаться XR-впечатлениями в любом месте с устойчивым LTE-соединением (Это то, чего нет сейчас при просмотре RT 360. – Прим A.N.), загружать 3-гигабайтный фильм менее чем за 3 минуты сразу перед посадкой в Airplane or access large files and applications in the cloud as quickly as those stored on your phone. The Snapdragon X20 modem supports an expanded range of technologies and frequency bands in licensed, unlicensed and shared RF spectrum – all designed to accelerate global Gigabit LTE availability as all carriers prepare for 5G. The modem supports maximum LTE Category 18 download speeds with 1.2Gbps bandwidth, x5 signal aggregation, licensed access (LAA), VoLTE on both SIM cards, and 4×4 MIMO with x3 aggregation.
Safety
End users are demanding increased privacy due to the growth in the amount of personal data stored on the device. Similarly, payment companies are looking for more secure authentication mechanisms to improve the reliability and safety of data. The Snapdragon 845 features an isolated hardware security coprocessor (SPU) that is designed to improve the protection of biometric data used for authentication, as well as key management of user or application data used to encrypt sensitive information. (The SPU does not replace previous security mechanisms, it is a kind of 'add-on' designed to draw conclusions and react based on data obtained from other Qualcomm security technologies. – Note A.N.)
Friends, I did not specifically indicate technical data, focusing on technology. This is how you can find out where the progress curve will lead Qualcomm and all its competitors after it. You can always find more detailed information on the Qualcomm website or when watching the presentation itself:
Samsung Electronics will be the first in the world to equip smartphones with 512 GB eUFS storage
In the last issue we talked about the imminent release of the second generation 10nm chipsets from the Korean company. Koreans sitting in an information ambush are leaking the news every milligram, as happened last week. This time we are talking about support by new chipsets of drives according to the eUFS standard (multiband access) up to 512 GB and the very announcement of the release of such drives.
This time, we can really say that Samsung did something to Qualcomm, because in the Snapdragon 845 discussed above, support for drives up to a maximum of 256 GB was announced. What is the news and benefits of 'world's first'? It's all about the volume and read / write speeds. The new V-NAND drive offers speeds of up to 860 MB / s read and 255 MB / s write. For the end user, this means transferring UHD movies to the smartphone's memory in seconds. The new memory controller, according to Samsung, has also undergone an upgrade and is more energy efficient.
Chipsets compatible with Android GO
Recently, in the comments under Konstantin Ivanov's article dedicated to the release of Android Oreo Go Edition, we discussed the prospects of transferring the new 'light' Android to old smartphones. As in the situation with other operating systems, the presence or absence of drivers for a specific chipset for a specific version Android plays a huge role in this. In this rightful case, official information from chip makers about the support of the new OS by their chipsets will be invaluable. Or, in other words, what chipsets will be in the new budget smartphones with Android GO on board.
According to MediaTek, with Android GO their MT6737 and 6739 chipsets for 4G smartphones and a veteran of smartphone construction MT6580 for 3G smartphones are fully compatible. Qualcomm announced the release of new smartphones with their chipsets and Android GO in the first quarter of 2018, but refrained from specifics. Despite this, it can be argued that, most likely, such smartphones will be equipped with Snapdragon 210/212, for the simple reason that there are no more budget chipsets from Qualcomm in the production. In turn, this means compatibility with Android GO and gives hope for the transition to the new OS of all devices built on the basis of Qualcomm 210, 212, 410 and 412 (And others, with 4 Cortex A- 53 иX5 LTE modem. – Прим A.N.). We are waiting, fingers crossed, for new firmware from romodels in early 2018.
Nvidia launches Titan V 'smart' graphics card
Nvidia decided to break the existing situation when the development of machine learning systems could only take place in specialized organizations. The Titan V graphics card is based on the Nvidia Volta GPU, which allows you to tackle machine learning issues on local computers. Compared to its predecessor in the face of Titan X, it is promised to accelerate calculations of all types while maintaining energy consumption at the same level.
Among other things, at any time, a developer can increase the computing power of his computer using the Nvidia GPU Cloud (NGC) cloud service. The service also provides its users with Titan V-optimized software products for the development of everything related to AI. The entire kit (including software) is only available from the Nvidia Store for $ 2990.
This news is already interesting because a home tool for getting your own Skynet has been created and sold, but there is still no scientific justification for the existence of AI as such. Do you think it could be that AI is just another bait that marketers use to get money out of our pockets?