Bringing GenAI to high-end smartphones

It’s hard to see without another Snapdragon 7+ chip this year [Snapdragon 8s Gen 3] Same as the 7+ successor. -Ryan Smith, AnandTech, March 18^th2024

Qualcomm once again this week announced its second mobile phone Snapdragon SoC, proving the adage “Ask and you shall receive.” This time, the company has announced the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3, the latest generation member of its relatively new Snapdragon 7+ SoC series. Like its predecessor, the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2, the Gen 3 is aimed at the high-end smartphone market, offering high-end features at more modest performance and cost, but with a feature set and performance levels that are still ahead of the “midrange.” ” smartphone SoC. And, with the launch of the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 on Monday, Qualcomm has split this segment into two SKU lines.

Last year’s Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2 (7pG2) established the template for the Snapdragon 7+ series, and the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3 (7pG3) could more easily define its role in the world and slide into Qualcomm’s product stack. Despite the Snapdragon 7 branding, the 7+ is still a significantly more powerful chip than mainline Snapdragon 7 series chips (such as the regular Snapdragon 7 Gen 3), bypassing the line between the two series. Most notably, 7+ is still the lowest level to use high-performance Arm Cortex-X-class CPU cores as the primary CPU core, clearly demarcating which chip families will offer flagship single-threaded CPU performance.

Digging deeper into the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3’s specs, it looks a lot like a stripped-down version of the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 – which isn’t surprising considering the timing of the chip’s launch and the fact that it’s a Snapdragon 7+. The 2nd generation is a streamlined version of the Snapdragon 8+ 1st generation. Of course, Qualcomm will never confirm this level of chip detail, but the relatively high cost of producing masks for TSMC’s 4nm process means Qualcomm is very incentivized to use the Snapdragon 7 and 8 series, which currently have 5 different SKUs ( There appear to be 4 different chips).

Regardless, the 7pG3 still retains its position as the cheapest Qualcomm SoC containing Arm Cortex-X cores. The 7pG3 is clocked at 2.8GHz, which doesn’t hit the same 3GHz+ clock speeds as the Snapdragon 8 SoC, but that still means the 7pG3 comes with the most powerful CPU cores Qualcomm currently offers on its mobile chips. The rest of the cluster, meanwhile, is the same combination of Cortex-A720 performance cores and Cortex-A520 efficiency cores we saw on the 8sG3, with four A720s clocked at 2.6GHz and finally three A520s clocked at 1.9 GHz megahertz.

Qualcomm doesn’t offer any CPU performance guidance on the 7pG3 vs. 8sG3 – preferring to focus on performance comparisons with the previous generation Snapdragon 7 chip – but looking at the clock speeds on the otherwise identical CPU cluster, the 7pG3 should deliver around 90% better performance. 8sG3 CPU performance. Otherwise, Qualcomm tells us that the 7pG3’s multi-threaded CPU performance will be a modest 15% improvement over its “last generation” predecessor, driven primarily by architectural improvements to the CPU cores.

More notable, however, is the memory subsystem that powers the chip. The Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2 used a 32-bit LPDDR5 memory bus (the typical size of Snapdragon 7 chips), while the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3 breaks that mold with a 64-bit LPDDR5X memory bus (usually limited to Snapdragon 8 configurations) chips . Therefore, the available memory bandwidth of 7pG3 is more than 2.5 times that of 7pG2, with the peak memory bandwidth of the latest 7+ chip being 67.2GB/sec. The wider memory bus does most of the heavy lifting, but the addition of LPDDR5X support cannot be ignored; even with the maximum speed of LPDDR5X-8400, this represents a huge upgrade in the memory subsystem compared to 7pG2.

With so much extra memory bandwidth, it’s no surprise that Qualcomm is promising 7pG3 to significantly improve GPU performance. All told, the company claims the new chip offers a 45% improvement in GPU performance over the 2nd generation chip. For Qualcomm, we didn’t get any more details on how to configure the Adreno GPU on the 7pG3, but Qualcomm would need to invest more in GPU transistors to improve GPU performance to this extent.

Unfortunately, due to Qualcomm’s waterfall strategy, the division of functions between the various Qualcomm SoCs is still a bit confusing. 8 Gen 3 offers hardware ray tracing and global illumination support, 8s Gen 3 (still) offers ray tracing support, and 7+ Gen 3 drops ray tracing support entirely. So it’s still a relatively powerful GPU, but by flagship/high-end smartphone standards it’s certainly the latest generation in terms of functionality. That said, the version of the Adreno GPU IP does come with Qualcomm’s Adreno Frame Motion Engine 2.0, first introduced on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.

Meanwhile, the DSP/NPU situation on the 7pG3 ends up looking a lot like the 8sG3: a hybrid. 7pG3 officially supports generative AI models, marking the first time this feature has appeared in 7+ SoCs, underscoring Qualcomm’s desire to promote generative AI capabilities as broadly as possible into its SoCs. However, Qualcomm’s spec sheet doesn’t show that the generation of NPU IP used on the 7pG3 is significantly different from the 7pG2, so as with the 8sG3, this appears to be driven more by software support than hardware capabilities.

Next, 7pG3 retains Qualcomm’s triple 18-bit Spectra ISP for its camera system, now using its next-generation “cognitive” IP. In terms of raw capabilities and resolution limits, there’s no change from the previous generation – 4K60 video capture and up to 200MP photos – but image processing capabilities have been improved behind the scenes. Most notably, this version of Spectra ISP supports semantic segmentation for photo processing.

However, video enthusiasts will be disappointed to find that AV1 decoding functionality is not yet available in this SKU. The 7pG3 can hardware decode VP9 and H.265 videos, but currently AV1 hardware decoding is still exclusive to the Snapdragon 8 series. Assuming that the 7pG3 actually uses the same chip as the 8sG3, this means that AV1 decoding was intentionally retained as a feature/cost differentiator.

Finally, the communication side of 7pG3 is the side stage of 7pG2. Classified as a Snapdragon X63 integrated modem, the 7pG3 supports sub-6 and mmWave spectrum, supporting 2×2 MIMO on mmWave and 4×4 MIMO on sub-6. The chip’s maximum 5G upload speed is rated at 3.5Gbps, while theoretical download speeds are actually a bit slower than the previous generation, at 4.2Gbps and 4.4Gbps respectively.

Paired with the X63 modem is Qualcomm’s FastConnect 7800 system, which offers Wi-Fi 7 support with 2×2 MIMO, as well as Bluetooth 5.4. This marks the first time the Snapdragon 7 SoC supports Wi-Fi 7.

All in all, Qualcomm is positioning the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3 as the direct successor to the Gen 2, with considerable improvements in CPU performance, an even more significant improvement in GPU performance, and a 5% improvement in energy efficiency. The latest 7+ SoC incorporates new hardware and software features compared to its predecessor, but its features are also clearly differentiated/limited enough from the 8/8 to avoid stepping on the toes of the company’s best SoCs.

According to Qualcomm, phones based on Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3 will be released within a few months. The first OEMs to adopt this technology will be Sharp, Realme, and OnePlus. Like its predecessor though, we’d be surprised to see the latest 7+ chip gain a lot of traction outside of China.