Snapdragon 8 Elite Makes Its Debut! All-Core, AI and Imaging Upgrades Herald a New Era for Mobile Platforms

Snapdragon 8 Elite Makes Its Debut! All-Core, AI and Imaging Upgrades Herald a New Era for Mobile PlatformsOn October 22, 2024, at the annual Snapdragon Technology Summit, Qualcomm unveiled its new generation of flagship mobile platform, but it's not called Snapdragon 8 Gen4. Instead, it's been rebranded as the new "Snapdragon 8 Elite," or "Snapdragon 8 Supreme Edition" in Chinese

Snapdragon 8 Elite Makes Its Debut! All-Core, AI and Imaging Upgrades Herald a New Era for Mobile Platforms

On October 22, 2024, at the annual Snapdragon Technology Summit, Qualcomm unveiled its new generation of flagship mobile platform, but it's not called Snapdragon 8 Gen4. Instead, it's been rebranded as the new "Snapdragon 8 Elite," or "Snapdragon 8 Supreme Edition" in Chinese. This name change signifies a new beginning for Qualcomm's mobile platform, indicating its ambition to become the core of an "Elite All-Star Lineup" encompassing smartphones, PCs, and automobiles.

This new name is primarily due to the Snapdragon 8 Elite's adoption of Qualcomm's newly developed Oryon CPU architecture. This architecture was previously implemented in the Snapdragon XElite PC processor launched last year and will be extended to the automotive sector this year.

Looking back at the evolution of Qualcomm Snapdragon processor names, particularly the changes in flagship platform monikers, reveals a captivating journey. From 2006 to 2008, Qualcomm's mobile processors lacked the "Snapdragon" brand, employing traditional letter-number combinations like QSC6000 series, MSM6000/7000 series. At the time, the entire industry was still in its nascent stages, and brand awareness was yet to take hold. The QSD8250, launched in late 2008, marked the first product to feature the "Snapdragon" brand. Subsequent iterations, Snapdragon S1, S2, S3, and S4, steadily established Qualcomm as a leader in the industry.

Beginning in 2013, the Snapdragon 800, Snapdragon 700, Snapdragon 600, Snapdragon 400, and Snapdragon 200 series comprehensively covered the spectrum from flagship to entry-level segments, confirming Qualcomm's dominance in the mobile processing arena. In 2021, the Snapdragon 888 departed from traditional numbering sequences, employing the auspicious "888" to appeal to the burgeoning Chinese smartphone market. The "Snapdragon xGenx" era officially commenced in 2022, dividing the range into four main series, Snapdragon 8/7/6/4, from top to bottom. Most series have progressed to their third generation, completing three iterative cycles. However, this wasn't a synchronized update. It's only now that the brand-new Snapdragon 8 Supreme Edition has made its grand appearance!

CPU: The Era of All-Core at All-Time High Frequencies Has Arrived!

The Snapdragon 8 Supreme Edition is not just a mere SoC processor; it's a complete mobile platform comprising over 40 distinct components, all sourced from Qualcomm, including radio frequency, transceivers, power management, ultrasonic fingerprint recognition, mobile connectivity, and more, making it a comprehensive solution. Constructed using TSMC's second-generation N3E 3nm process, identical to Apple's A18 series and MediaTek's Dimensity 9400, it delivers a 27% overall energy efficiency improvement.

The cornerstone of this platform is the newly designed second-generation Oryon CPU architecture. Tailored specifically for smartphones, it brings optimal performance and energy efficiency to flagship devices. Compared to the Snapdragon 8 Gen3, the Snapdragon 8 Supreme Edition boasts a 45% increase in single-core performance, a 45% enhancement in multi-core performance, a 62% boost in Iometer networking speed, and a 45% gain in energy efficiency.

The Snapdragon 8 Supreme Edition features two "Super Cores" (Prime) based on the Oryon architecture, clocked at an astounding 4.32GHz. Optimized to handle the most demanding applications while maintaining exceptional energy efficiency, they set a new record for mobile processor frequency, even rivaling desktop PCs. Accompanying them are six "Performance Cores" (PerformanceCore) also operating at a high 3.53GHz, nearing the Dimensity 9400's massive 3.62GHz.

It's worth noting that the Snapdragon 8 Supreme Edition adopts a configuration of two super-large cores and six large cores. Over successive , efficiency cores (small cores) have been gradually reduced until they were completely eliminated. Looking back, the Snapdragon 8 Gen1 employed a CPU core combination of 1 super + 3 large + 4 small cores. The Snapdragon 8 Gen2 switched to 1 super + 4 large + 3 small, and the Snapdragon 8 Gen3 upgraded to 1 super + 5 large + 2 small cores, with one small core being removed and one large core added per generation. Now, small cores have finally exited the stage of history, ushering in the true era of all-core.

In reality, ARM essentially ceased updating and iterating small cores years ago. The A510 and A55 were separated by a gap of three years, and the A520 was a relatively minor upgrade. Evidently, everyone gradually realized that the previously embraced big.LITTLE concept no longer suited the current era. Architectural, technological, and process advancements have rendered small cores a hindrance, making all-core configurations superior in terms of both performance and energy efficiency.

The Oryon CPU's cache has also undergone significant improvements. The previous generation featured a 12MB L3 cache shared among all cores. The Snapdragon 8 Supreme Edition doubles the L2 cache capacity to 24MB, once again leading the industry. Moreover, it's divided into two sections: 12MB dedicated to the two super-large cores and 12MB shared among the six performance cores. Simultaneously, the L1 cache has been comprehensively expanded: 192KB per super-large core and 128KB per performance core, totaling 1152KB, exceeding 1MB.

Furthermore, considering generative AI's heavy reliance on memory, the Snapdragon 8 Supreme Edition is equipped with the cutting-edge LPDDR5X memory, operating at a real frequency of 5333MHz, equivalent to 10.7GHz. According to Qualcomm, the Snapdragon 8 Supreme Edition's CPU performance can increase by up to 50% compared to its predecessor, while achieving up to a 45% enhancement in energy efficiency.

Qualcomm emphasizes that the Snapdragon 8 Supreme Edition, benefiting from the improved microarchitecture of the second-generation Oryon CPU, delivers an exceptional user experience, including faster application launch, seamless multitasking, and advanced generative AI capabilities.

GPU: Novel Slice Design Delivers 40% Performance Increase, 40% Power Reduction

Qualcomm's Snapdragon has consistently held the title of the industry's most powerful GPU graphics core, often even being playfully referred to as "buying a GPU and getting a CPU for free." However, historically, Qualcomm has seldom delved into the specific architectural design of its GPU, usually simply stating performance and energy efficiency improvements. This time, things are different.

The Snapdragon 8 Supreme Edition's Adreno GPU introduces a groundbreaking slice design for the first time, divided into three groups, all clocked at 1.1GHz, operating under unified scheduling by the instruction processor. Qualcomm asserts that this sliced GPU design is optimized for modern graphics workload handling, providing cores based on independent shader processors to achieve better task allocation and concurrent performance, resulting in a 40% performance increase while reducing power consumption by 40%. Notably, ray tracing performance improves by up to 35%. At the backend, there's a generous 12MB graphics cache, significantly minimizing the need to transfer data to memory for processing, thereby substantially reducing latency.

Regrettably, the internal structure of the slices remains undisclosed. It's speculated that each slice operates relatively independently, incorporating various unit modules internally, including computation cores, samplers, geometry units, raster units, load/store units, rendering backends, and caches. This design philosophy bears similarities to those employed by NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel GPUs. For instance, NVIDIA has long adhered to a hierarchical structure of GPC/TPC/SM, while AMD uses computation units (CU), and Intel relies on render slices (RenderSlice).

In the realm of gaming, the Snapdragon Game Studio, through ongoing deep collaboration with Feral Interactive, is jointly developing and about to release the mobile game Grid Legends. It can run at 2x frame rate on the Snapdragon 8 Supreme Edition, delivering stunning visuals. It will also exclusively feature Qualcomm's Adaptive Performance Engine 4.0, optimizing game thread strategies to achieve greater energy efficiency and extend battery life.

The Snapdragon 8 Supreme Edition also marks the maiden support for running Unreal Engine 5 Nanite solutions on mobile devices, enabling cinematic-grade 3D environments in mobile games. This is a unique capability exclusive to the Qualcomm Snapdragon platform. Nanite is a groundbreaking virtual geometry system introduced with Unreal Engine 5, employing a novel internal mesh format and rendering technology that renders pixel-level detail and a vast number of object instances. Simultaneously, it's highly intelligent, processing and rendering only the details visible to the human eye and utilizing a highly compressed data format, thereby significantly reducing the rendering burden.

AI: Increasingly Human-like, Without Needing a Network Connection!

Edge-side generative AI is undoubtedly the most fiercely contested battlefield for both mobile and PC processors, characterized by rapid evolution and iteration, consistently expanding its reach across broader domains