Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. unveiled a new visual processing technology Wednesday that is said to deliver improved performance, power efficiency and user experience.
The announcement of the Adreno 5xx graphics processing unit (GPU) family makes official the release of the forthcoming Snapdragon 820 processor, Qualcomm’s flagship chipset for top-tier smartphones.
The Adreno 5xx line, which currently consists of two models set to include the Snapdragon 820 and 620/618 processors and Qualcomm’s new 14-bit Spectra image signal processing (ISP) unit in its first two iterations, marks the company’s advancement from its previous Adreno 4xx technology and lays the foundation for Qualcomm Technologies’ next generation of custom GPUs.
“Qualcomm Spectra ISP, together with our Adreno 5xx-class GPU, brings an entirely new level of imaging to smartphones, and is designed to allow Snapdragon-powered devices to capture ultra-clear, vivid photos and videos regardless of motion and lighting conditions and display them with the color accuracy that nature intended,” said Qualcomm Technologies Product Management Vice President Tim Leland.
“We’re significantly enhancing the visual processing capabilities of Snapdragon to support next-generation user experiences related to computational photography, computer vision, virtual reality and photo-realistic graphics on mobile devices, all while maximizing battery life,” Leland continued. “As emerging growth segments such as automotive demand more immersive visual experiences, Snapdragon 820 will enable the next generation of infotainment, computer vision and advanced processing for instrument clusters.”
Both the Adreno 510 and 530 will include the Qualcomm Spectra ISP, which will provide improved image quality and more natural skin tones through the use of dual 14-bit ISPs supporting up to three simultaneous cameras (rear and forward facing) as well as up to 25 megapixels at 30 frames per second.
The Adreno 530 will be integrated with the Snapdragon 820 and should include up to 40 percent lower power consumption with 40 percent faster performance when compared with the Adreno 430; improved fine-grain power management and new rendering, compositing and compression techniques; up to 4K HEVC video support at 60 frames per second over HDMI 2.0 to Rec. 2020 UHD displays and TVs; support for 64-bit virtual processing; OpenGL 3.1+Android Extension Pack; Renderscript; and the new Open CL 2.0 and Vulkan standards.
The new Adreno 510 will run with a Snapdragon 620/618 processor.
Devices based on Snapdragon 820 are expected to be available in the first half of 2016.
