Snapdragon 8 Elite: Qualcomm's Self-Developed Oryon CPU Ushers in a New Era of Mobile Performance

Snapdragon 8 Elite: Qualcomm's Self-Developed Oryon CPU Ushers in a New Era of Mobile PerformanceThe next Qualcomm Snapdragon Summit will take place in Hawaii from October 22nd to 24th, where the highly anticipated next-generation Snapdragon 8 series flagship, the Snapdragon 8 Elite, will be unveiled. Qualcomm's official slogan "Good, Never Enough" reflects their confidence in the new product

Snapdragon 8 Elite: Qualcomm's Self-Developed Oryon CPU Ushers in a New Era of Mobile Performance

The next Qualcomm Snapdragon Summit will take place in Hawaii from October 22nd to 24th, where the highly anticipated next-generation Snapdragon 8 series flagship, the Snapdragon 8 Elite, will be unveiled. Qualcomm's official slogan "Good, Never Enough" reflects their confidence in the new product.

The Snapdragon 8 Elite is the pinnacle of the Snapdragon 8 series, with its core highlight being the first-ever integration of Qualcomm's self-developed Oryon CPU. This marks a new era for Qualcomm in the mobile processor space, breaking free from reliance on Arm's generic solutions and bringing unprecedented performance gains to Snapdragon.

Unprecedented Self-Developed CPU: The Powerful Debut of Oryon

"Elite" signifies excellence and an elite class. Rumours suggest the Chinese name for the Snapdragon 8 Elite will be "Snapdragon 8 Supreme Edition", signifying its top-tier status within the Snapdragon 8 series.

The Snapdragon 8 Elite employs TSMC's 3nm process, more precisely the second-generation N3E process. Compared to the N3B process used by Apple's A17, N3E boasts superior production capacity and technological advancement while offering a more competitive price.

In terms of CPU architecture design, the Snapdragon 8 Elite adopts a 2+6 core configuration. The two ultra-large cores have a final frequency of 4.32GHz, while the six large cores operate at 3.53GHz, reflecting a significant leap compared to the 3.3GHz of the previous generation Snapdragon 8 Gen3. GeekBench 6 test results reveal a single-core score of 2845 and a multi-core score of 10628 for the Snapdragon 8 Elite, representing a substantial 46% increase in multi-core performance and approximately 27% improvement in single-core score.

GPU Performance Gets an Upgrade: Adreno Powers High-Frame Rate Gaming Experiences

On the GPU front, the Snapdragon 8 Elite is expected to feature a new Adreno GPU, ensuring stable and efficient operation even in demanding gaming scenarios. Qualcomm has previously introduced GPU frame interpolation technology, supporting game upscaling and super-framing, effectively replacing external dedicated graphics chips and delivering a gaming experience that rivals native high frame rates. This generation of Snapdragon 8 Elite can effortlessly handle any major mobile game, even making the stable running of 3A games on Snapdragon phones a reality.

AI-Powered Enhancement: Upgrading Smartphones to Intelligent Assistants

With the advent of the AIoT era, features like image removal, image expansion, text-to-image generation, and video creation all depend on AI capabilities. The Snapdragon 8 Elite is equipped with a new generation of Hexagon AI processors, significantly boosting the device's on-device AI inference capability, delivering a more comprehensive experience for mobile voice assistants, photography enhancement, and other aspects, truly realizing the intelligence of smartphones.

Take the Honor Magic7 series as an example. This series leverages SoC and system-level AI processing capabilities to automatically query phone auto-renewal information with a single voice command, eliminating the worry of unexplained deductions and removing the need for manual cancellation. This signals a future where smartphones will gradually transform into intelligent assistants, akin to J.A.R.V.I.S. in the movie "Iron Man," becoming your confidante, capable of completing various tasks with a simple voice command.

AI capabilities also manifest significantly in computational photography. Coupled with the latest ISP, image synthesis and computation become faster and more accurate, allowing phone users to capture desired effects with greater ease, all handled by the terminal device.

Connectivity Upgrades: 5G-A and Satellite Communication Become Flagship Standards

Connectivity has always been a traditional strength of Qualcomm. The Snapdragon 8 Elite is expected to incorporate the recently released Snapdragon X80 5G modem and RF system, boasting peak download speeds of 10Gbps and upload speeds of 3.5Gbps. It supports both 5G millimeter wave and sub-6GHz, and features 5G Advanced capabilities.

5G Advanced, also known as 5.5G, is a key focus for the next stage of communication system development. Its coverage area has expanded, offering a 10-fold improvement over traditional 5G in terms of experience, encompassing speed, latency, and other aspects. It represents a crucial step toward 6G evolution. With China's vigorous development, 5G Advanced is poised to deliver a more robust network experience for smartphones.

The Snapdragon X80 integrates a dedicated tensor accelerator, employing AI optimization to enhance throughput, quality of service (QoS), spectral efficiency, power efficiency, and millimeter wave beam management, expanding network coverage and reducing latency.

Furthermore, the Snapdragon X80 marks the first integration of NB-NTN satellite communication within a 5G modem. It's anticipated that more phones will be equipped with this feature moving forward, potentially becoming a standard feature in the future. This capability ensures continuous connection for users in critical situations, allowing prompt emergency calls, making it a lifesaver in critical moments.

Snapdragon 8 Elite Ignites the Android Flagship Battle: Manufacturers Vie for First Releases

Overall, the Snapdragon 8 Elite delivers a comprehensive upgrade across performance, energy efficiency, AI processing, and image processing, representing the current industry's top tier. The inclusion of the self-developed Oryon CPU is particularly noteworthy, making it a landmark product, truly reaching the industry's ceiling, especially with the previously unimaginable 4.32GHz frequency. The Snapdragon 8 series is undoubtedly positioned to confidently navigate future mobile market trends, leading the charge for mobile performance evolution.

Currently, major terminal manufacturers are eager to showcase their flagship products, even preparing for a first-release competition. The Xiaomi 15 series is widely considered the most likely candidate to secure the first release, continuing the strategy of offering both a larger and a smaller flagship. Imaging and AI are key focus areas, including computationally enhanced photography with Leica lens support. The new iteration of their proprietary operating system, MIUI 15, will deeply integrate AI, bringing more applications of on-device large language models and introducing hardware-level AI scheduling for enhanced performance.

OnePlus 13 is also a strong contender for the first release. Li Jie, its head, even claims to deliver the strongest performance and gaming capabilities. The new phone will also be the first to come pre-installed with ColorOS 15, bringing comprehensive system-level AI with features like one-click screen questioning, instant questioning after taking a photo, one-circle search, image questioning, document questioning, and more. It will also boast AI-powered image creation capabilities, including AI ultra-clear pixels, AI glare removal, AI motion blur removal, AI passerby removal, and other functions. Powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite's robust AI support, the phone will become even more intelligent.

Additionally, the Honor Magic7 series, among the first batch of models, is a leading product in the AI industry, offering an experience surpassing even Apple's Apple Intelligence. It can already utilize AI agents to call upon third-party applications and execute cross-application operations, truly understanding screen content and consumer habits, and providing tasks or suggestions accordingly.

With the upcoming launch of the Snapdragon 8 Elite, a global performance battle is brewing among flagship phones, delivering unprecedentedly powerful flagship devices and ushering in a new era of intelligent mobile devices. All of this will be officially revealed at the Snapdragon Summit on October 22nd, an event worth anticipating.