Adreno

Operating system support

There are proprietary drivers for the Linux-based mobile operating system Android available from Qualcomm themselves. Historically the only way to have GPU support on non-Android Linux was with the libhybris wrapper.

Linux and Mesa supports the Adreno 200/300/400/500 series of GPUs with a driver called freedreno. Freedreno allows fully open-source graphics on devices like the 96Boards Dragonboard 410c and Nexus 7 (2013).

Adreno is a series of semiconductor cores with intelligent proprietary graphics processing units (GPUs) developed by Qualcomm and used in many of their SoCs.

Adreno (an anagram of the AMD Radeon graphics card brand) began as Qualcomm's own brand of graphics technology and was used in their mobile chipsets. Early Adreno models included the Adreno 100 and 110, which had 2D graphics acceleration and limited multimedia capabilities. At the time, 3D graphics on mobile platforms were typically handled by software rendering engines, which limited their performance. Due to the growing demand for more advanced multimedia and 3D graphics capabilities, Qualcomm purchased the Imageon IP license from AMD to add 3D hardware acceleration capabilities to its mobile products. Further collaboration with AMD led to the development of the Adreno 200, released in 2008, which was integrated into the first Snapdragon SoC. In January 2009, AMD sold its entire Imageon handheld graphics processing division to Qualcomm.

Adreno 130 is inside the MSM7x01 and MSM7x01A. It supports OpenGL ES 1.1, OpenVG 1.1, EGL 1.3, Direct3D Mobile, Scalable Vector Graphics Tiny Support 1.2, Direct Draw and graphics device interface.

Adreno 200 (AMD Z430) inside QSD8x50 and MSM7x27 (133 MHz). It offers a programmable feature pipeline and texture streaming with support for OpenGL ES 1.0, OpenGL ES 1.1, OpenVG 1.1, EGL 1.4, Direct3D Mobile, SVGT 1.2 and DirectDraw. (22 million triangles per second, 133 million pixels per second, clock speed up to 133 MHz).

Adreno 200 is improved inside MSM7x25A and MSM7x27A (200 MHz). It supports OpenGL ES 2.0, OpenGL ES 1.1, OpenVG 1.1, EGL 1.4, Direct3D Mobile, SVGT 1.2, Direct Draw and GDI. (40 million triangles per second, 200 megapixels per second, clock speed up to 200 MHz).

Adreno 203 inside MSM8225 and MSM8225Q (400 MHz). This is an improvement over the Adreno 205. It has a higher frequency, better pixel fill rate, lower power consumption and better performance in 3D. It is about 50-100% faster than the Adreno 200 (improved) and 10-25% faster than the Adreno 205. It can run twice as fast as the Adreno 205. It supports OpenGL ES 2.0, OpenGL ES 1.1, OpenVG 1.1, EGL 1.4, Direct3D Mobile, DirectX 9.0c, SVGT 1.2, Direct Draw and GDI. (42-50 million triangles per second, 250-300 pixels per second, 192-400 MHz clock speed).

Adreno 205 inside QSD8x50A, MSM7x30 and MSM8x55 (245 MHz). Its improvements include hardware SVG and Adobe Flash acceleration and better shader performance than the Adreno 200. It supports OpenGL ES 2.0, OpenGL ES 1.1, OpenVG 1.1, EGL 1.4, Direct3D Mobile, SVGT 1.2, Direct Draw and GDI. (57 million triangles per second, 250 million pixels per second, clock speed up to 400 MHz).

Adreno 220 inside MSM8660 or MSM8260 (266MHZ) with single-channel memory. It supports OpenGL ES 2.0, OpenGL ES 1.1, OpenVG 1.1, EGL 1.4, Direct3D Mobile, DirectX 9.0c, SVGT 1.2, Direct Draw and GDI. (88 million triangles per second, 500 million pixels per second, standard clock speed up to 266 MHz, overclocking up to 400 MHz). Adreno 225 inside MSM8960 (400 MHz) with unified shader architecture and dual-channel memory. It supports Direct3D 9.0c in addition to OpenGL ES 2.0, OpenGL ES 1.1, OpenVG 1.1, EGL 1.4, Direct3D Mobile, SVGT 1.2, Direct Draw and GDI.

Adreno 320 inside Qualcomm S4 Pro & Prime Series with unified shader architecture and dual-channel memory. It supports Direct3D 9_3 feature level in addition to OpenGL ES 3.0, OpenGL ES 2.0, OpenGL ES 1.1, OpenVG 1.1, EGL 1.4, Direct3D Mobile, SVGT 1.2.

Adreno 330 inside the Nexus 5, Nokia Lumia 2520, Nokia Lumia 1520, Nokia Lumia Icon, Nokia Lumia 930, Samsung Galaxy S5, Samsung Galaxy Note 3, Sony Xperia Z1, Sony Xperia Z1 Compact, smartphones Sony Xperia Z2, Sony Xperia Z3, Sony Xperia Z3 Compact, Sony Xperia Z Ultra, Xiaomi Mi3, Xiaomi Mi4, OnePlus One, HTC One (M8) and LG G2 / G3.

Adreno 420 inside Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 supports Direct3D 11.2 runtime environment. Inside Google Nexus 6, Samsung Galaxy S5 LTE-A, Samsung Galaxy Note 4, Samsung Galaxy Note Edge, LG G3 Cat. 6, Qualcomm Snapdragon 805, the first phone SoC to ever have a 128-bit memory bus.

The Adreno 540 inside the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 is the first phone SoC with variable refresh rate and Foveated Render / Variate Rate Shading, Qualcomm calls its implementations Q-Sync and Adreno Foveation.

Adreno 630 inside the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845, the first phone SoC with Inside-Out Room-scale 6DoF with SLAM

Adreno 640 inside Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 - the first phone SoC with updated GPU drivers from the Google Play Store.