San Diego, California-based Telecommunications and Semiconductors firm; Qualcomm through its subsidiary, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. on Monday announced a new processor a ‘Qualcomm Snapdragon 850‘ specifically designed for Windows 10 Always Connected PCs – succeeding the Snapdragon 835 that was used in the first Always Connected PCs.
The new processor comes with 30% increase in performance, 20% increase in battery life and efficiency, and 20% increase in Gigabit LTE speeds.
According to reports by Windows Central, the boost in performance and longevity is due to the new Hexagon 685 digital signal processor (DSP), Kyro 385 CPU, and new X20 LTE modem. While on the other side, the refreshed X20 modem can deliver theoretical speeds of up to 1.2Gbps versus the X16 modem.
Meanwhile, for those unaware, ‘Always Connected PC’ is a term coined by Microsoft and Qualcomm to essentially represent a Windows PC using an Arm-based smartphone SoC (System on Chip), Snapdragon 835, instead of an x86 processor from AMD or Intel. The new Qualcomm Snapdragon 850 chip is exclusively made for Windows 10 devices.
What’s New
The new Snapdragon 850 has 2.95GHz clock speed while its predecessors Snapdragon 845, and Snapdragon 835 have 2.8GHz, and 2.6GHz respectively. The rise in the Snapdragon 850 clock is for better thermal space, larger batteries, different drivers, and unique hardware in these Window 10 PCs.
Snapdragon 850 brings support for Microsoft’s Machine Learning SDK and artificial intelligence (A.I.) initiatives.
The chipset supports Qualcomm Aqstic and Qualcomm aptX audio, which features virtual surround sound, Up to native Direct Stream Digital (DSD) format, High-dynamic-range and ultra-low Total Harmonic Distortion plus Noise (THD+N), and aptX HD support.
