Qualcomm Snapdragon 670, 640, and 460 specs leak

Earlier this month, Qualcomm took the wraps off the Snapdragon 845. The chip will be Qualcomm’s flagship silicon for 2018 and appear in most flagship phones, but not every device needs the company’s flagship chip. To serve these devices, Qualcomm makes a variety of chips, and today we’re getting a look at three of them thanks to a leak on Weibo.

The Snapdragon 670 will replace the 660 as Qualcomm’s most powerful mid-tier processor. It will move to a 10 nm manufacturing process from the 660’s 14 nm manufacturing process earlier this year. The CPU will feature an octa-core design, with four Kryo 360 cores clocked at 2 GHz and four Kryo 385 cores clocked at 1.6 GHz. It’ll also feature an Adreno 620 GPU.

Devices running the Snapdragon 670 will be able to have one camera at up to 26 MP or dual 13 + 13 MP shooters. The modem is a step down from that in the Snapdragon 845 but still sounds impressive nonetheless. It will support LTE Cat 16 with maximum speeds of 1 Gbps download and 150 Mbps upload.

The Snapdragon 640 is showing us something that we’ve never seen before— a processor with a 6+2 core combination. It will sport two Kryo 360 cores clocked at 2.15 GHz and six Kryo 360 cores clocked at 1.55 GHz. This appears to be possible due to ARM’s DynamIQ, which allows for mixing and matching for Cortex-A75 and A55 CPU cores. With DynamIQ, there can be a total of eight cores in a cluster, much like we’re seeing with the Snapdragon 640. Just like the SD670, the 640 will be made on the 10 nm process and features 1 MB of system cache.

Rounding out the SD640 is an Adreno 610 GPU and a Snapdragon XZ12 LTE modem, with download speeds that will be able to reach 600 Mbps down and 150 Mbps up. The chip will also use the same Image Signal Processor (ISP) as the Snapdragon 670, and allow for a single 26 MP or dual 13 MP camera setup.

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 460 processor will feature eight cores in total— four Kryo 360 cores clocked at 1.8 GHz and four Kryo 360 cores clocked at 1.4 GHz, but no system cache. The chip shares the same integrated modem as the Snapdragon 640, but differs in its ISP. Phones running the SD460 can have a single camera at up to a 21 MP resolution. Unlike the 670 and 640, the 460 will be built on a 14 nm process.

All of the cores that will be used in these chips are Kryo CPU cores, which are based on the Cortex-A75 and A55. Last year, Qualcomm committed to a “Built-on-Cortex” that saw the Snapdragon 835 use semi-custom Kryo CPU cores. Previous Snapdragon processors used either off-the-shelf ARM process node or fully custom Kryo cores.

Instead, Qualcomm is now using a semi-custom design from the latest Cortex licensing agreement. This year’s Kryo 280 was the first semi-custom ARM CPU and this year we’re seeing an expanded lineup of Kryo 385 Gold, 385 Silver, 360 Gold, and 360 Silver cores. The Built-on-Cortex agreement gives Qualcomm the power to customize existing Cortex products with selections ranging from performance, power efficiency, and more. Our own Gary Sims made a fantastic video about the subject you can find here if you’d like to know more.