It's not that Qualcomm's chip design ability is limited, but that the market he faces is different from Apple's, so he must do his homework of balancing performance and cost.
Apple's A-series chips are only for their own use, and they don't take delivery, while the iPhone, iPad and iPod have huge sales, which means that the cost of each A-series chip can be diluted to a very low level, so that even if the A-series chips are piled up to improve their performance, they can make money.
on the other hand, in Qualcomm, its customers include first-line brands such as Xiaomi, OPPO and vivo, and second-and third-line brands such as Meizu and Lenovo, whose shipments are calculated in millions. If Qualcomm piles up materials willfully like Apple, it will raise the cost of chips, and the shipping price will inevitably increase. If mobile phone manufacturers want to make money, the price of mobile phones will also rise with it. But can Xiaomi, OPPO and vivo match the iPhone in price? Meizu, Lenovo and other brands, when did the price of flagship mobile phones exceed 5, yuan?
if Snapdragon chips can't be sold, how can I collect the patent licensing fee? (Don't forget that Qualcomm's business model is "buy baseband and send chips")
Therefore, in order to make mobile phone manufacturers can afford Snapdragon chips in large quantities, Qualcomm must sacrifice performance for cost.
but don't sacrifice too much, otherwise the market won't buy it.
how to sacrifice? Naturally, it is castrated.
let's compare Kirin 98 with Snapdragon 855, whose CPU uses the ARM public version:
In addition, Kirin chip and Apple A series chips use separate AI chips, but Snapdragon has omitted it. Is Qualcomm unable to design AI chips? You can learn from Huawei and find foreign aid like CAMBRIAN. Judging from Qualcomm's ability to let the CPU, GPU and other cores take part-time AI functions, it should be capable of designing AI chips. In other words, Snapdragon chips have been absent from independent AI chips for two generations in succession, which can only make the market guess that it is to make way for costs and sacrifice performance again.
It can be said that Qualcomm's business model determines that it will not take the road of Apple's performance experience first.
Qualcomm recently launched an overclocking version of Snapdragon 855, Snapdragon 855+, due to its skillful performance and cost balancing of mobile phone SOC chips. The internal structure is exactly the same, except that the frequency of CPU's large core is increased by 12MHz and that of GPU's by 87MHz.
You can build a new product line by raising the frequency. For such a Qualcomm, can you still count on it and Apple PK? Therefore, Snapdragon 865 will, as always, accompany Apple A13 chip without any suspense.
According to the past practice, as long as Qualcomm or Apple doesn't change the chip design idea, I think Snapdragon 865 still can't surpass Apple A13 processor. Apple engineers' design concept is to achieve better single-core performance, spare no effort in the scale and cache of single-core transistors, and multi-core only pays attention to both, while Qualcomm still focuses on multi-core performance and baseband chips. However, most apps still have poor support for multi-core so far, and A13 with stronger single-core performance still has advantages.
since A11 chip, Apple has gone to the road of self-research on the GPU, and its performance has improved very quickly with each generation. Although Qualcomm's adreno series has improved well with each generation, compared with A series chips, it still lacks sincerity. From Xiaolong 835 to Snapdragon 855, adreno's improvement is more about running points, and the actual game experience is far from as big as running points. If Snapdragon 865' s GPU can't advance by leaps and bounds, A13 will still be the first in GPU.
In fact, strictly speaking, it is not easy to directly compare Snapdragon 865 and Apple A13, because they are used on two different platforms. Snapdragon 865 faces various Android phones, and Apple A13 only faces iphone and IOS systems, so A13 chip has natural advantages in optimization and adaptation, and Apple can also carry out targeted optimization design, thus making A13 perform better on its own mobile phone, while for Snapdragon 865.
However, Snapdragon 865 is expected to surpass A13 in 5G baseband. After all, Apple still has no baseband technology and can only concentrate on CPU and GPU. Snapdragon 865 will be the first Snapdragon chip with native baseband, which can better cope with the coming 5G era. Although Apple is going to develop its own baseband, it is not a simple matter.
first of all, why did Kirin 98 and Snapdragon 855 not perform as well as Apple A12? The crystal area of the chip was larger than A12, and the baseband was not integrated, so plug-in mode was adopted. Kirin and Snapdragon can do it in one chip (baseband accounts for 1/3 of the transistors), and all the transistors are less than 7 billion, and the transistors really used for performance are less than 5 billion. Apple A12 is 1 billion, and the hardware scale is twice as large! Of course, the performance is ahead, but personally, Apple is not optimistic, and Kirin series and Snapdragon series have greater potential.
Snapdragon 865 processor can hardly surpass A13, not to mention that A13' s single-core performance may exceed 5,5 points and multi-core performance may exceed 16, points.
The Snapdragon 865 processor of A77, which will be adopted soon, is estimated to exceed 4, points in terms of single-core performance.
Some guesses about Snapdragon 865:
We don't expect much from the performance of Snapdragon 865 and A13. The only thing we care about is their baseband. Snapdragon 865 should use a combination of 5G and non-5G. A13, on the other hand, should not use 5G baseband, because Apple uses plug-in baseband, and Qualcomm's X5 does not have multimode, so it will not use 5G baseband.
even though the performance of A13 is strong, without the blessing of 5G baseband, the sales of A13' s iPhone may not be as big.
According to past experience, Apple's A13 chip will have advantages if it is compared purely from single-core performance. However, Snapdragon is also constantly strengthening, and the appearance of Snapdragon 865 may further narrow the single-core performance gap with A13.
if we talk about the overall SOC package, I think Snapdragon 865 will be better. Snapdragon will take the lead in multi-core performance, and the balance between GPU and CPU is undoubtedly that Snapdragon will do better.
Furthermore, Snapdragon 865 is likely to support the 5G network. In this regard, A13 is undoubtedly at a disadvantage or will inevitably lag behind Xiaolong in time.
It is reported that there will be two models of Snapdragon 865. The first model is equipped with a Snapdragon X55 modulator to support the 5G network, and the subsequent products of X5 modulator currently used in Snapdragon 855. The second one only supports 4G LTE.
according to the information revealed by the whistleblower Roland Quandt on Twitter, Qualcomm has started to develop the next generation of mobile chipsets, and these chips involve Snapdragon 865, which is named SM825 and supports LPDDR5X RAM and UFS 3. flash memory. And revealed that Snapdragon 865 will have two models (Kona+Huracan), one of which supports 5G network, but which model is still unknown.
at present, there is little news about A13, and it is worthy to be sure that it will not support the 5G network. And in the coming Snapdragon 865 or A13, I think the former will have more advantages. However, when they are applied to different platforms, the differences are also influenced by many factors. For example, we know that A13 will benefit from the friendly support of its own system and have a slight advantage. Snapdragon's multi-core performance is remarkable, but the current application of multi-core support is still not perfect. How the specific situation is still waiting for the release of the two to further understand it.
absolutely no chance! It is estimated that the cpu part (performance-level core) will still be hammered by the old product a11! Can only rely on multi-core left! The gpu part should be able to break off the wrist with a13! Qualcomm has integrated baseband, so it is doomed that its processor performance will not make any big strides! Minor repairs at most! A13 estimates that cpu will continue to pound all Android processors, and gpu will take the lead! As long as Android processors continue to integrate baseband, it is impossible to make products comparable to Apple processors!
Although domestic chips are rising now, in essence. It is still very different from foreign chips.
After all, there is hope that China's
Snapdragon 865 should be equipped with 5G baseband, and Apple A13 is probably the same. It is estimated that the 5G baseband version will have to wait. In other aspects such as calculation and graphics processing, Apple A13 should still be better than Xiaolong 865.
I will only use Kirin cpu in the future.