Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite: The New King of Mobile Chips, Featuring Upgraded Performance and Functionality

Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite: The New King of Mobile Chips, Featuring Upgraded Performance and FunctionalityQualcomm held its annual Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii today, officially unveiling the new Snapdragon 8 Elite flagship platform. The first change in the new platform is the name Snapdragon 8 Elite, which is also the official Chinese name

Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite: The New King of Mobile Chips, Featuring Upgraded Performance and Functionality

Qualcomm held its annual Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii today, officially unveiling the new Snapdragon 8 Elite flagship platform. The first change in the new platform is the name Snapdragon 8 Elite, which is also the official Chinese name. From now on, Qualcomm's flagship mobile platform will use the same naming convention as the Snapdragon X series PC platform.

Process Improvement, Performance Breakthrough

In terms of process technology, Snapdragon 8 Elite adopts TSMC's latest N3E process, the same process used for Apple's A18 Pro processor. Compared to the previous generation Snapdragon 8 Gen3, N3E not only increases transistor density but also achieves higher energy efficiency through optimized transistor architecture and materials.

New CPU Architecture, Significant Performance Improvement

The biggest change in Snapdragon 8 Elite is the adoption of Qualcomm's custom Oryon CPU. The new CPU uses an unprecedented "2+6" architecture design, with 2 super-large cores and 6 large cores. The CPU core frequency is also extremely impressive, especially for the two super-large cores, which reach 4.32GHz, making it comparable to desktop processors. The frequency of the other 6 large cores is also impressive, reaching 3.53GHz.

According to the data from Geekbench based on official engineering samples, Snapdragon 8 Elite's single-core score surpasses 3200+, representing a 37.9% increase compared to the previous generation Snapdragon 8 Gen3 platform's score of around 2320. In terms of multi-core performance, Snapdragon 8 Elite achieves a score of 10424 on the Geekbench platform. Compared to the previous generation's score of around 7500, this represents a 38.8% performance improvement. On the AnTuTu platform, Snapdragon 8 Elite engineering samples easily achieve a score of over 3 million. Compared to the previous generation Snapdragon 8 Gen3 platform's score of around 2.13 million, Snapdragon 8 Elite delivers a 43.2% overall performance improvement compared to its predecessor.

Apart from changes in core architecture, the cache configuration also differs from the previous Kryo CPU. Each of the two super cores has 192KB L1 cache and shares 12MB L2 cache; each of the six performance cores has 128KB L1 cache and shares 12MB L2 cache. Snapdragon 8 Elite achieves a maximum total cache of 24MB and supports LPDDR5x memory with a frequency of up to 5.3GHz.

New Adreno GPU, Enhanced Graphics Performance

Snapdragon 8 Elite adopts the tiled architecture Adreno GPU for the first time, optimized for modern graphics workloads and equipped with dedicated shading processor cores, resulting in excellent GPU concurrency performance and flexible resource allocation based on the load. The new Adreno GPU's tiled architecture is composed of three independent GPU tiles with a frequency of 1.1GHz, each of which can operate independently at its corresponding frequency, enabling resource allocation based on the load and enhancing GPU efficiency. Additionally, the GPU has dedicated 12MB graphics memory, reducing the reliance on Snapdragon 8 Elite's system LPDDR5 memory for handling complex rendering scenarios.

Qualcomm states that the new Adreno GPU delivers a 40% performance improvement, a 40% power reduction, and a 35% increase in ray tracing performance.

Significant AI Enhancement, Enabling Smarter Experiences

AI is another highlight of the Snapdragon 8 Elite, with Qualcomm significantly upgrading the AI engine. The Hexagon NPU's scalar and vector accelerators have added additional cores: the vector accelerator has 6 cores, and the scalar accelerator has 8 cores. In terms of performance, the upgraded NPU delivers a 45% increase in inference speed and a 45% improvement in performance per watt compared to the previous generation.

The multi-modal assistants running on Snapdragon 8 Elite will support more models, including LMM, LLM, LVM, and ASR.

Collaboration with Tencent's HunYuan, Fostering On-Device Deployment of Large Models

Qualcomm announced a collaboration with Tencent's HunYuan, jointly promoting the on-device deployment of 7B and 3B versions of Tencent's HunYuan large model based on the Snapdragon 8 Elite mobile platform. This partnership showcases the impressive performance achieved through this collaboration.

"Naraka: Bladepoint" Mobile Game Introduces Large Language Model for the First Time, Creating a New AI Teammate

Leveraging the powerful Qualcomm Hexagon NPU of Snapdragon 8 Elite, "Naraka: Bladepoint" mobile game introduces, for the first time, a large language model with 1.8 billion parameters to the device side. By utilizing Qualcomm AIStack's full-stack optimization, which includes software and tools, the game creates a new and upgraded end-to-end AI teammate feature. This feature enables the AI teammate to not only understand and execute player's voice commands during battles but also provide voice guidance for new players. Furthermore, players can engage in natural voice communication with the AI teammate.

Collaboration with NetEase to Optimize "Naraka: Bladepoint" Mobile Game for Increased Performance

It's worth mentioning that NetEase and Qualcomm announced a collaboration to optimize the "Naraka: Bladepoint" mobile game. The two companies will optimize the game based on multiple cores of the Snapdragon 8 Elite mobile platform. With "Naraka: Bladepoint" mobile game set to ultra-high quality, Snapdragon 8 Elite achieves a 22-frame increase in average frame rate and a 43% improvement in frame rate stability compared to the previous generation platform.

Support for Unreal Engine 5.3, Delivering Ultimate Mobile Gaming Experience

Snapdragon 8 Elite also supports native Unreal Engine 5.3 solutions, enabling the full suite of Snapdragon Elite Gaming features, delivering "stunning cinematic 3D environments" in mobile games while maximizing efficiency.

Faster 5G Connection Speed, Higher Positioning Accuracy

Snapdragon 8 Elite integrates the X80 5G modem-RF system, featuring a peak download speed of 10Gbps and a peak upload speed of 3.5Gbps (3GPPR17/R18). It comes with a dedicated AI tensor accelerator and supports 8 carriers (mmWave), 2x2MIMO (mmWave). It employs the industry's first 4x6MIMO solution, enabling gigabit-level 5G speeds in more locations, and increasing positioning accuracy by 30%.

Faster Wi-Fi Connection Speed, Supporting Wider Application Scenarios

Snapdragon 8 Elite comes equipped with the FastConnect 7900 wireless Wi-Fi connection system, offering a peak speed of 5.8Gbps and supporting the High Bandwidth Simultaneous (HBS) standard, enabling low-latency instantaneous connections between devices and accessories. This is also the industry's first solution to integrate Wi-Fi ranging, Bluetooth, and UWB ultra-wideband connectivity into a single 6nm chip, enabling applications such as object tracking and door access control.

Enhanced Imaging Capabilities, Superior Photographic Results

The Snapdragon 8 Elite mobile platform features an enhanced image signal processor (ISP), with deeper integration with the new Hexagon NPU. This translates to enhanced HDR effects, more natural skin tones and sky colors, and improved autofocus capability. Moreover, Qualcomm has introduced semantic segmentation technology for photos and videos at the chip level, along with the ability to remove objects from videos.

Numerous Smartphone Manufacturers Set to Launch Flagship Devices Powered by Snapdragon 8 Elite

At today's Snapdragon Summit, Zeng Xuezhong, President of Xiaomi Group International, stated that the upcoming Xiaomi 15 series flagship will be the first to feature the new Snapdragon 8 Elite mobile platform. Other manufacturers, including Asus, Honor, iQOO, Motorola, Nubia, OnePlus, OPPO, Red Magic, Redmi, Realme, Samsung, vivo, Xiaomi, and ZTE, are all planning to launch Snapdragon 8 Elite powered devices in the coming weeks.

Overall, Snapdragon 8 Elite is a comprehensively upgraded flagship mobile platform, delivering significant advancements in performance, functionality, AI capabilities, and connectivity, offering users a more powerful mobile experience. The future holds promise for smartphones powered by Snapdragon 8 Elite, as they are poised to lead the trends in mobile technology, bringing users a more vibrant mobile lifestyle.