Snapdragon s4 with 41 megapixels?

[jusil164]

Hello there... after seeing nokia lumia 1020 and knowing the spec sheet... there is some question running on my mind:

How did Nokia packed that 41 megapixel camera and make it work on a Snapdragon s4 while it can only support up to 20MP camera on the S4 spec sheet?
Ican't see on the web where they have mentioned how have they done that?

 

[Laura Knotek]

Where did you see the S4 spec sheet?

 

[EchoRedux]

Like the cake, the spec sheet is a lie.

 

[jusil164]

here: Snapdragon S4 Product Specs

 

[EchoRedux]

Where did you see the S4 spec sheet?

Snapdragon S4 Product Specs

Camera

Up to 20MP, Stereoscopic 3D Kit

 

[jhoff80]

One of my big questions when I heard that 41 MP PureView tech was coming to Windows Phone was what the silicon implementation would look like, since essentially no smartphone SoCs out of box support a 41 MP sensor, certainly none of the ones Windows Phone 8 GDR2 currently supports. With the PureView 808, Nokia used a big dedicated ISP made by Broadcom to do processing. On the Lumia 1020, I was surprised to learn there is no similar dedicated ISP (although my understanding is that it was Nokia’s prerogative to include one), instead Nokia uses MSM8960 silicon for ISP. Obviously the MSM8960 is only specced for up to 20 MP camera support, Nokia’s secret sauce is making this silicon support 41 MP and the PureView features (oversampling, subsampling, lossless on the fly zoom) through collaboration with Qualcomm and rewriting the entire imaging stack themselves. I would not be surprised to learn that parts of this revised imaging solution run on Krait or Hexagon DSP inside 8960 to get around the limitations of its ISP. I suspect the Lumia 1020 includes 2 GB of LPDDR2 partly to accommodate processing those 41 MP images as well.

AnandTech | Some Thoughts About the Lumia 1020 Camera System

 

[mase123987]

I heard something about a separate chip that handles the camera. Not sure how it all works.

 

[EchoRedux]

It's been mentioned by the bloggers on WPC including Daniel Rubino himself saying that Qualcomm has false information on their own website on at least two separate occasions.

 

[jusil164]

Nokia’s secret sauce is making this silicon support 41 MP and the PureView features (oversampling, subsampling, lossless on the fly zoom) through collaboration with Qualcomm and rewriting the entire imaging stack themselves.]AnandTech | Some Thoughts About the Lumia 1020 Camera System

what does this part mean...

 

[vlad0]

It means that Qualcomm provided modified hardware and Nokia helped write the drivers in order to take advantage of it...

For a lot of us out there this was the biggest question.. how are they going to get around the limitations of the currently supported hardware platform. I am sure that all of this will be much easier once 8.1 rolls out and they can use Snap 800 ..

Overall its a very different approach compared to the 808, where you have 3 separate chips working on the processing.. CPU, GPU, dedicated DSP which resides inside the camera module itself. Talk about synchronizing all that..

With the 1020..its pretty much all in the SoC.

 

[bawboh86]

There's also the fact that Nokia and Qualcomm worked together to alter the S4 chip slightly for it to handle the special computations that Nokia needed for the 41 MP images and the downsampling they do to make the 5MP versions.

 

[darthhen]

jusil164,

I don't think you'll get a real answer on this forum or anywhere. I would expect Nokia to really think out of the box to come up with the hardware and software to implement their camera system. You need to keep in mind it is a combination of hardware and software techniques. Whatever Nokia has publicly stated is only enough to get the public excited about it.

Seems like Samsung bolted together a point and shoot camera onto a phone so the result sort of look like a point and shoot + phone. It still works. But when you put the S4 Zoom and 1020 next to each other, the S4 Zoom is some what laughable.

Just my $0.02. I'm by no means an expert in phone developer.

But it is good that you ask this question.

 

[TexasLabRat]

I would be absolutely shocked if Qualcomm provided modified hardware specifically for the Lumia 1020. The volume is so low that they would never be able to recoup the mask costs, nevermind all the other costs involved with managing a separate SKU.

More likely...the "collaborated with Qualcomm" means that Nokia was given access to Qualcomm engineers who were able to guide Nokia in either 1) creating low-level drivers that pushed the on-board camera module of the SoC to its max via better efficiency, 2) enabling the direct access and use of the Hexagon DSP for the pixel crunching, or 3) enabling the direct access to the Adreno GPU stack for GPGPU functionality to offload the calculations to that hardware.

Just my opinion and I have no specific information one way or the other beyond the wild speculation on various enthusiast sites..but I do know a fair amount about the semiconductor industry and making a new mask for an SoC is no trivial matter (ie costs millions of dollars) even if the design was already good to go, debugged, and ready for production (new circuits = new logic = lots of simulator time and QA).

 

[bawboh86]

More likely...the "collaborated with Qualcomm" means that Nokia was given access to Qualcomm engineers who were able to guide Nokia in either 1) creating low-level drivers that pushed the on-board camera module of the SoC to its max via better efficiency, 2) enabling the direct access and use of the Hexagon DSP for the pixel crunching, or 3) enabling the direct access to the Adreno GPU stack for GPGPU functionality to offload the calculations to that hardware.

I'd say one and three, maybe all of them. But the whole "collaborated with Qualcomm" was about all they said, so it could really go either way. I do agree that it would be shocking for them to make a Snapdragon S4a just for them. Then again, stranger things have happened...