Qualcomm's first custom 64-bit core officially unveiled: Qualcomm Kryo promises 2x boost in performance
The Snapdragon 820's main competition comes from Apple's upcoming A9 series of chips, Samsung's line of Exynos processors, Huawei's custom HiSilicon chips, and the MediaTek Helio X20 chipset. The latter is particularly interesting with its Tri-Cluster CPU build, the Helio X20 features two ARM Cortex-A72 cores for the most power intensive tasks, and two clusters of four ARM Cortex-A53 cores. One is running at 2GHz for tasks requiring "medium" power. The other cluster runs at a clock speed of 1.4GHz for lighter use. You added the cores up correctly, the Helio X20 comes with a deca-core CPU.
If Qualcomm can successfully hold back the challenges it faces from various emerging chip makers and the Snapdragon 820 is every bit the success that Qualcomm believes it will be, this year will seem like a nightmare that it has finally awoken from. And while more manufacturers might examine the idea of churning out their own processors (Xiaomi says it will have two available next year for mid and low-range models), Qualcomm is doing the R&D required to keep its chipsets inside low, mid and high-end smartphones in the years ahead.
source: Qualcomm
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