SoC stands for system on a chip.

This is a chip/integrated circuit that holds many

components of a computer—usually the CPU (via a microprocessor or microcontroller),
memory, input/output (I/O) ports and secondary storage—on a single substrate, such
as silicon. Having all of these components on one substrate means SoCs use less power
and take up less space than their multi-chip counterparts. SoCs are becoming
increasingly popular with the growth of Internet of Things and edge and mobile
computing. Take, for example, Intel’s September 2018 acquisition of SoC firm Silicon
Engineering Group and older acquisitions of Altera and others.
One common example of tech that uses an SoC is video game consoles, such as the
Nvidia Tegra X1 used in the Nintendo Switch or the AMD Flute and AMD Gonzalo SoCs
expected to power the next Xbox and PlayStation, respectively. Raspberry Pi computers,
Arduino boards and STEM kits also use SoCs. SoCs are often used in STEM kits because
they are easy to use, and, therefore, helpful in teaching STEM. You also find SoCs in
smartphones and tablets.

 SoCs that use a microcontroller (a chip with the CPU, RAM, ROM and potentially other
components). Example: Arduino boards
 SoCs that use a microprocessor (a chip with a CPU only). Examples: SoCs for smartphones,
like Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 845 (also used for virtual reality headsets) and the Apple A12
Bionic SoC used in the iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max and iPhone XR. Rasperry Pi and Intel's
line of SoC FPGAs.
 SoCs for specific applications, which may or may not use a microprocessor or microcontroller.
This is known as an ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit).
SNAPDRAGON 636 Mobile Platforms
This is a list of Qualcomm Snapdragon chips. Snapdragon is a family of mobile system on a
chip (SoC) made by Qualcomm for use in smartphones, tablets, watches, and smartbook devices.
Built on the success of the Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 625 and
Snapdragon 626 mobile platforms, the Snapdragon 632 mobile platform
takes the 600-tier to the next level. With a Qualcomm® Kryo™ 250 CPU,
the Snapdragon 632 mobile platform boasts up to 40% performance
improvement* over its predecessor. It’s designed to support advanced
photography and enhanced gaming while taking advantage of power
efficiencies and fast LTE speeds to deliver upgraded user experiences.

The Snapdragon 632 was announced on June 26, 2018.[39] Pin and software compatible with
Snapdragon 625, 626 and 450; software compatible with Snapdragon 425, 427, 429, 430, 435 and
439.

FABRICATION TYPE
The 14 nanometer (14 nm) MOSFET technology node is the successor to the 22 nm/(20 nm) node.
The 14 nm was so named by the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS).
One nanometer (nm) is one billionth of a meter. Until about 2011, the node following 22 nm was
expected to be 16 nm. All 14 nm nodes use FinFET (fin field-effect transistor) technology, a type
of multi-gate MOSFET technology that is a non-planar evolution of planar silicon CMOS technology.
In December 2012, Samsung Electronics taped out a 14 nm chip.
A fin field-effect transistor (FinFET) is a multigate device, a MOSFET (metal-oxide-
semiconductor field-effect transistor) built on a substrate where the gate is placed on two, three, or
four sides of the channel or wrapped around the channel, forming a double gate structure. These
devices have been given the generic name "finfets" because the source/drain region forms fins on
the silicon surface.

Intel® 14 nm technology provides good dimensional scaling from 22 nm. The transistor fins are
taller, thinner, and more closely spaced for improved density and lower capacitance. Improved
transistors require fewer fins, further improving density, and the SRAM cell size is almost half
the area of that in 22 nm.
The 14 nanometer (14 nm) lithography process is a semiconductor
manufacturing process node serving as shrink from the 22 nm process. The term "14 nm" is
simply a commercial name for a generation of a certain size and its technology, as opposed
to gate length or half pitch. The 14 nm node was introduced in 2014/2015 and is currently
getting replaced by the 10 nm process.

14 nm Microprocessors[edit]
 AMD

 EPYC
 EPYC Embedded
 Ryzen 3
 Ryzen 5
 Ryzen 7
 Ryzen Embedded
 Ryzen Threadripper

 Apple
 Ax
 Intel

 Atom x5
 Atom x7
 Core i3
 Core i5
 Core i7
 Core i7EE
 Pentium
 Pentium Gold
 Pentium Silver
 Celeron
 Xeon
 Xeon Bronze
 Xeon D
 Xeon E3
 Xeon E5
 Xeon E7
 Xeon Gold
 Xeon Platinum
 Xeon Silver

 Samsung
 Exynos
Central Processing Unit -ARMV8 (64 bit ARM LTE)
The 64-bit architecture is a microprocessor or computer architecture that has
a datapath width or a highest operand width of 64 bits or 8 octets. These architectures
typically have a matching register file with registers width of 64 bits.
Long-Term Evolution (LTE) is a fourth-generation radio frequency transmission standard
for wireless devices developed by the 3GPP as a successor to 3G. LTE was designed to
permit very high bandwidth in real-world applications of up to 100-150 mbit/s with latency
upper than home fiber connection. LTE is expected to be replaced by 5G.
There are many levels of this technology, every phone implements a (CAT) level,
widespread support is for cat4 ( 150 max download 50 max upload ).
AArch64 features[edit]

 New instruction set, A64

o Has 31 general-purpose 64-bit registers.
o Has dedicated zero or stack pointer (SP) register (depending on instruction).
o The program counter (PC) is no longer directly accessible as a register.
o Instructions are still 32 bits long and mostly the same as A32 (with LDM/STM instructions
and most conditional execution dropped).
 Has paired loads/stores (in place of LDM/STM).
 No predication for most instructions (except branches).
o Most instructions can take 32-bit or 64-bit arguments.
o Addresses assumed to be 64-bit.
 Advanced SIMD (NEON) enhanced
o Has 32× 128-bit registers (up from 16), also accessible via VFPv4.
o Supports double-precision floating point.
o Fully IEEE 754 compliant.
o AES encrypt/decrypt and SHA-1/SHA-2 hashing instructions also use these registers.
 A new exception system
o Fewer banked registers and modes.
 Memory translation from 48-bit virtual addresses based on the existing Large Physical Address
Extension (LPAE), which was designed to be easily extended to 64-bit.
AArch64 was introduced in ARMv8-A and is included in subsequent versions of ARMV8-A. AArch64
is not included in ARMv8-R or ARMv8-M, because they are both 32-bit architectures.

The 632 features four Kryo 250 Silver high-efficiency cores

operating at 1.8 GHz along with four high-performance Kryo 250
Silver operating at 1.8 GHz.
4 + 4 cores (1.8 GHz Kryo 250 Gold – Cortex-A73 derivative + 1.8 GHz Kryo 250 Silver – Cortex-
A53 derivative)[42]

Kryo 250[edit]
Kryo 250 CPU was introduced in the Snapdragon 632 Mobile Platform, announced in June
2018.[11] Also built on a 14 nm process, it is similar to Kryo 260, with a few differences in the size for
L2 cache. Qualcomm claims it has an increased performance of 40% compared to the Snapdragon
625, which only uses Cortex-A53 cores.
 632: 4x Kryo 250 Performance @ 1.8GHz + 4x Kryo 250 Efficiency @ 1.8GHz[12]
 Samsung 14LPP Process

the Snapdragon 632 is more akin to the Snapdragon 652 as it’s now the first time we see big cores
brought down to the lower mid-tier successor to the Snapdragon 630.

The Snapdragon 632 now continues this lower-tiered positioning within the 600 series, but brings for
the first time the performance benefit of big cores to this price segment. For these big cores we find
4x Kryo 250s running at up to 1.8GHz.

Cortex-A53
The Cortex-A53 processor is a high
efficiency processor that implements the
Armv8-A architecture.
Architecture Armv8-A
1-4x Symmetrical Multiprocessing (SMP) within a single processor cluster, and multiple c
Multicore
SMP processor clusters through AMBA 4 technology
 AArch32 for full backward compatibility with Armv7
 AArch64 for 64-bit support and new architectural features
 TrustZone security technology
ISA
 Neon advanced SIMD
Support
 DSP & SIMD extensions
 VFPv4 floating point
 Hardware virtualization support
MULTICORE CPU
The Cortex-A53 is a 2-wide decode superscalar processor, capable of dual-issuing some
instructions.

The Cortex-A53 processor delivers significantly more performance than its predecessors
at a higher level of power efficiency.

Gain high efficiency and versatility with Cortex-A53, a good processor choice for high
single thread and FPU/Neon performance for a wide range of applications such as
mobile, DTV, automotive, networking, storage, and aerospace.
Cortex-A73
The Cortex-A73 processor is the most-
efficient high-performance processor that
implements the Armv8-A architecture.
The Cortex-A73 processor cluster has one to four cores, each with
their L1 instruction and data caches, together with a single shared
L2 unified cache
Architecture Armv8-A
Multicore 1-4x Symmetrical Multiprocessing (SMP) within a single processor cluster, and multiple c
 AArch32 for full backward compatibility with Armv7
 AArch64 for 64-bit support and new architectural features
 TrustZone security technology
ISA Support  Neon advanced SIMD
 DSP & SIMD extensions
 VFPv4 floating point
 Hardware virtualization support
The Arm Cortex-A family is designed for devices undertaking complex compute tasks,
such as hosting a rich operating system platform and supporting multiple software
applications. Cortex-A73 is the most power-efficient processor in the Cortex-A family. It
is designed for mobile processing in devices that require the highest performance in the
Arm low-power architecture.

GPU
A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed to rapidly manipulate
and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame buffer intended for output to
a display device. GPUs are used in embedded systems, mobile phones, personal
computers, workstations, and game consoles. Modern GPUs are very efficient at
manipulating computer graphics and image processing.

Adreno 506 is a series of graphics processing unit (GPU) semiconductor intellectual property
cores developed by Qualcomm and used in a variety of their SoCs.
 Adreno 506 96 128 + 8 KB 14 600/650

Microarchitecture Clock
Name Fab(nm)
(MHz)

ALUs
Type On-chip graphics memory
(SIMDs)
[note 1]

Adreno 506 is the GPU Qualcomm has used for their Snapdragon 625 and 626 SOCs. It is built on the
14nm FinFET Process which is very power efficient. ... While the 14nm Process of Snapdragon 625
& Adreno 506 gives consistent performance for long duration.

The Qualcomm Adreno 506 is a mobile graphics card for mid-range smartphones and
tablets (mostly Android based). It is included in the Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 SoCs
and based on the Adreno 500 architecture (like the Adreno 520 in the S820, which
should be fully compatible in software).

The GPU supports modern standards like Vulkan 1.0 (according to Wikipedia), OpenGL
ES 3.1 + AE (3.2 in other sources), OpenCL 2.0 and DirectX 12 (FL 12.1 according to
Wikipedia, 11.1 according to Qualcomm). Furthermore, the GPU supports Universal
Bandwidth Compression (UBWC) to save memory bandwidth.

DirectX 12
OpenCL 2.0
OpenGL ES 3.2
Vulkan 1.0
OpenCL™ (Open Computing Language) is the open, royalty-free standard for cross-
platform, parallel programming of diverse processors found in personal computers,
servers, mobile devices and embedded platforms

Vulkan is a low-overhead, cross-platform 3D graphics and computing

API. Vulkan targets high-performance realtime 3D graphics applications such as video
games and interactive media across all platforms.

Open Graphics Library (OpenGL) is a cross-language, cross-platform application

programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics. The API is
typically used to interact with a graphics processing unit (GPU), to achieve hardware-
accelerated rendering

Graphics
 Hardware Acceleration
 Decode: H.264 (AVC), H.265 (HEVC), V8, and VP9

 Up to 4K Ultra HD video capture @ 30FPS

 Up to 1080p video capture @120 FPS

DSP

Qualcomm Technologies developed the Hexagon Digital Signal Processor (DSP) as a world class
processor with both CPU and DSP functionality to support deeply embedded processing needs of
the mobile platform for both multimedia and modem functions. It is an advanced, variable instruction
length, Very Long Instruction Word (VLIW) processor architecture with hardware multi -threading.
The Hexagon architecture and family of cores provides Qualcomm Technologies a competitive
advantage in performance and power efficiency for modem and multi-media applications and is a
key component of all of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon™ processors.

HEXAGON 546

a DSP microcontroller is a small computer that contains programmable output/input

peripherals, a processor core, and memory on a single integrated circuit. It may also
include a small amount of RAM and program memory.

ISP (IMAGE SENSOR PROCESSOR)

 Qualcomm Spectra image sensor processor

 2x Image Sensor Processor (ISP)

 14-bit
Megapixel:

 Up to 24 MP single camera
 Up to 13+13 MP dual camera

An image processor, also known as an image processing engine, image processing unit (IPU),
or image signal processor (ISP), is a type of media processor or specialized digital signal
processor (DSP) used for image processing, in digital cameras or other devices.[1][2] Image
processors often employ parallel computing even with SIMD or MIMD technologies to increase
speed and efficiency. The digital image processing engine can perform a range of tasks. To increase
the system integration on embedded devices, often it is a system on a chip with multi-core
processor architecture.
MEMORY TECHNOLOGY

Low-Power Double Data Rate Synchronous Dynamic Random Access Memory, commonly
abbreviated as Low-Power DDR SDRAM or LPDDR SDRAM, is a type of double data
rate synchronous dynamic random-access memory that consumes less power and is targeted
for mobile computers. It is also known as Mobile DDR, and abbreviated as mDDR.

CONNECTIVITY

 WiFi
 Integrated 802.11ac 2 x 2 with MU-MIMO
 Peak Speed: 364 Mbps
 Bluetooth 5.0
 RF Front End
 LTE Modem
 Snapdragon X9
 Downlink:
 Category 13 up to 300 Mbps
 Up to 4 x 75 Mbps LTE streams
 Uplink:
 Category 7 up to 150 Mbps
 Up to 2 x 75 Mbps LTE streams
 Up to 64-QAM
 LTE FDD, LTE TDD, WCDMA (DB-DC-HSDPA, DC-HSUPA), TD-SCDMA, EV-
DO, CDMA1x, and GSM/EDG

IEEE 802.11ac is a wireless networking standard in the 802.11 set of protocols (which is part of the
Wi-Fi networking family), providing high-throughput wireless local area networks (WLANs) on the 5
GHz band.

BLUETOOTH

Audio[edit]
 Aqstic audio technology
 aptX audio technology
 Crystal clear VoLTE w/Ultra HD Voice (EVS)
 High fidelity music playback 192 kHz/24-bit
 Dolby 5.1 support


 The Qualcomm Aqstic audio platform includes audio codecs, DACs, power
amplifiers, and a suite of advanced audio and voice software technologies that
are engineered to work together to provide the best Hi-Fi audio quality,
advanced noise reduction, and voice UI experiences available on a mobile
device.

The established standard for home theater, broadcast,

and cinema surround sound, Dolby Digital 5.1
redefined the entertainment experience for audiences
around the world.