What are Qualcomm’s Kryo CPU cores?

Every phone has an SoC. At the center of these SoCs are CPU cores. Today we are going to be tackling the question, what are Qualcomm’s Kryo CPU cores?

Generally speaking, there are two types of CPU cores based on how they are built. These are IP CPU cores and Custom CPU cores. IP cores are made from ARM designs while Custom cores are modified ARM designs or non-ARM designs.

Qualcomm is a company that makes SoCs (Snapdragon) for smartphones. If you make SoCs, you’re going to need CPUs. Qualcomm customizes ARM’s designs to make their CPU cores. These CPU cores are called Kryo Prime, Kryo Gold, and Kryo Silver.

Qualcomm’s Kryo CPU cores

Qualcomm makes (or customizes) its cores because of a need to make its CPUs run better and to be more optimized for tasks. This has been their strategy for a while now and it has been working.

Qualcomm’s Kryo CPU cores are arranged in a three-tiered system.

Silver: Kryo silver cores are power-efficient cores. What this means is that these cores aren’t very powerful, but they can run basic tasks, stay cool and conserve battery.

Gold: The Gold cores are known as performance (big) cores. These cores have a lot of power and can handle heavy tasks depending on their architecture. The downside here is that powerful cores tend to heat up and drain the battery pretty quickly.

Prime: The Kryo Prime cores are a new addition to the Kryo setup. This is a result of Qualcomm adopting DynamIQ for its Snapdragon 800 series flagship SoCs. They offer a huge power boost to the SoCs but also suffer from heating and battery drainages as byproducts of their power.

Qualcomm’s Kryo CPU cores

Read: Qualcomm’s Snapdragon SoCs Explained

Microarchitecture

On most Snapdragon SoCs, Kryo cores are arranged in a big.LITTLE (4+4 or 2+6) configuration. So what you’ll get is 4 Kryo Gold cores + 4 Kryo Silver cores or 2 Kryo Gold cores + 6 Kryo Silver cores.

On the Flagships, the arrangement changes into a 1 Kryo Prime core + 3 Kryo Gold cores + 4 Kryo Silver cores (DynamIQ).

The new Kryo cores based on ARMv9 are the most powerful, followed by the Kryo 600 series. Next up, you have got the Kryo 500 and 400 series. The Kryo 200 cores are the least powerful of all the Kryo cores.

Design and manufacture

Qualcomm’s cores are sometimes referred to as semi-custom cores. This is because their cores are closely related to ARM’s IP designs. This makes it easy to compare their performance with those of IP cores.

Qualcomm are known as fabless SoC manufacturers because they do not do any manufacturing themselves. They usually contract the making of their SoCs to TSMC and/or Samsung. They favor TSMC a lot these days after the disaster that happened to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1.

Benefits

The use of customized cores has been very beneficial, not just to Qualcomm but to consumers as well. Qualcomm’s Kryo cores tend to be more efficient and optimized for handling tasks, apps, and games. Snapdragon SoCs are also well supported by Qualcomm and this makes it easier for software developers to optimize software (apps and games) for them.

Read: Qualcomm Snapdragon vs Samsung Exynos

Drawbacks

Customized CPU cores do not come cheap. Not even in the slightest. The Architecture license for starters is quite expensive, and the research and development are also expensive. On top of that, Qualcomm ensures that their SoCs are well supported by developers worldwide. These all cost money.

Hence, Qualcomm Snapdragon SoCs using Kryo cores are usually costly and phones using Snapdragon SoCs with Kryo cores tend to be more costly than phones using SOCs with IP cores. However, a lot of users are willing to forego the costs to enjoy the benefits that Snapdragon SoCs bring with them.

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