Difference Between Qualcomm Snapdragon S2 and Snapdragon S3

Snapdragon S2 and S3 are two sets of System on Chips (SoC) developed by Qualcomm over the last three years. SoCs are typically developed targeting the mobile computing market and Snapdragon S2 and S3 are no exceptions. Generally, a SoC is a computer on a single IC (Integrated Circuit, aka chip). Technically, a SoC is an IC that integrates typical components on a computer (such as microprocessor, memory, input/output) and other systems that cater electronic and radio functionalities.

Although Qualcomm has released a large number of Snapdragon SoCs over the last three years under different trade names such as MSM7230, MSM7630 etc., in August 2011, they have decided to put all of them under four simple names, namely Snapdragon S1, S2, S3 and S4, so that users can better understand their products and avoid confusion. Therefore, large lists of SoCs originally named individually are put together into the above groups and the naming of the groups is based on, the bigger the number, the more features in the SoC (for example, Snapdragon S3 will have more advanced features than Snapdragon S2). The target of this article is to compare Snapdragon S2 and S3; the popular SoCs that are categorized under S2 and S3 are as follows:

Qualcomm Snapdragon S2: 7X30 [MSM7230, MSM7630], 8X55 [MSM8255, MSM8655]

Qualcomm Snapdragon S3: 8X60 [APQ8060, MSM8260, MSM8660] 

Both, Snapdragon S2 and S3, are driven by Qualcomm’s own Scorpion CPU (Central Processing Unit, aka processor) and based on Qualcomm Adreno GPU (Graphics Processing Unit). Although Scorpion uses ARM’s v7 ISA (instruction set architecture, the one that is used as the starting place of designing a processor), they do not use ARM’s CPU design such as the popular ARM Cotex series for their processor design. Both the Snapdragon SoCs are fabricated in the semiconductor process known as 45nm of TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company).

Snapdragon S2

Snapdragon S2 SoCs were first seen in the second quarter of 2010. The first mobile phone to use a Snapdragon S2 SoC was HTC Vision in October 2010. From then, a large number of mobile devices have used a SoC from this group and to name a few: LG Optimus7, HTC Desire, HP Veer, HTC Ignite, HTC Prime, Sony Ericsson Xperia Pro, and Motorola Triumph.

Snapdragon S2 SoCs have Qualcomm Scorpion single core CPUs (that use ARM’s v7 ISA), which are typically clocked at 800MHz-1.4GHz. The GPU of choice for these SoCs are Qualcomm’s Adreno 205. Snapdragon S2 has both L1 cache (instruction and data) and L2 cache hierarchies, and it allows packing up to 1GB low power DDR2 memory modules.

Snapdragon S3

Snapdragon S3 SoCs (or rather MPSoC – Multi Processor System on Chip) were released in the third quarter of 2010. The first mobile device to use this MPSoC was HTC’s Sensation mobile phone, which was released in May 2011. Later, many other handheld devices used Snapdragon S3 as their choice of MPSoC and some of them are HP Touchpad, HTC Vivid, HTC EVO 3D, ASUS Eee Pad MeMO, and HTC JetStream Tablet.

The S3 deployed a Scorpion dual core CPU (that uses ARM’s v7 ISA) and an Adreno 220 GPU on the chip. The CPUs deployed are usually clocked between 1.2GHz and 1.5GHz. Snapdragon S3 has both L1 cache (instruction and data) and L2 cache hierarchies, and it allows packing up to 2GB low power DDR2 memory modules.

A comparison between Snapdragon S2 and Snapdragon S3 is tabulated below:

Summary

It was claimed by Qualcomm that their Snapdragon S3 MPSoCs are better and have more advanced features than Snapdragon S2 SoCs. It’s worth noting that HTC seems to be the mobile computing manufacturer who rely mostly on Qualcomm SoCs, as they are the first to use both Snapdragon S2 and S3 in their devices.