Despite announcing that we will not be seeing consumer hardware with the latest Snapdragon 820 until 2016, Qualcomm continues to announce the new features of the incoming SOC. This week, the announcement was for a “Hexagon 680 DSP”.
A DSP, or Digital Signal Processor, is a specialised processor – typically used in low power devices such as mobile phones – that assist the main CPU and GPU with offloading certain functions that can either be done faster and/ or consume less power. The most common use of DSPs which many would be familiar with is in camera chipsets, to produce more life-like, dramatic photos.
Qualcomm is expecting the enhanced DSP to be able to improve the power efficiency for always on sensors – voice recognition, step counting, location tracking – using a new “low power island”. It will also work in conjunction with the Qualcomm Spectra camera ISP to adaptively brighten sections of images and videos. Due to these enhancements, Qualcomm is expecting this type of dynamic imaging processing to be both faster and 10% more battery efficient.
It appears that we can expect Qualcomm to continue to “countdown” the features of the Snapdragon 820 leading up to its launch. Considering the battering that Qualcomm has taken this year over “heat issues” with their current top of the line Snapdragon 810 it’s not surprising to see Qualcomm trying to get some good coverage leading up to their next major chip release.
Are you excited for the possibilities of the next Snapdragon 820 powered smartphones?
