Qualcomm today revealed that the Kryo 385 CPU in the Snapdragon 845 mobile platform does not use off-the-shelf ARM cores and instead relies on semi-custom cores.
Processor designers often use cores such as those created by ARM. The Kryo 385 CPU has an octa-core design, with four high-performance cores and four high-efficiency cores. These cores are based on the Cortex A75 and A55 designs from ARM, but they have been heavily customized by Qualcomm in order to provide better performance across the larger Snapdragon 845 mobile platform. Each core has its own L2 cache, but all eight can then be managed by a new 2MB shared L3 cache.
Qualcomm says the benefit of the design here is to improve the speed with which the cores talk to the larger system, as well as lower thermals and draw less power. This will improve performance for augmented and virtual reality, and artificial intelligence.
