It’s that time of year again—the leaves and temperatures are dropping—and Qualcomm announced a new flagship mobile processor platform today at the Snapdragon Summit in Maui. As expected, the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 is now officially released with faster CPU core configurations, updated Adreno GPU, and rich AI engine. Qualcomm says this is its first mobile platform designed from the ground up with generative AI in mind, and you won’t have to wait long to try it out.
Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 CPU – Cortex X4 and Performance Core Quintet Introduced
The 4nm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 will power most of the high-end flagship mobile devices launching next year (in a few weeks). Qualcomm hasn’t revealed who will get the new chip first, but its partners include Asus, Honor, OnePlus, Oppo, Sony and ZTE. You may notice Samsung is missing from the list. The South Korean tech giant usually releases its own chipsets, launching a custom version of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 last year. We don’t know yet if Samsung will get an overclocked Snapdragon chip again, but it’s possible, although it’s not confirmed yet.
For the past few years, almost all mobile systems on a chip (SoC) have split eight CPU cores into two islands, but manufacturers have been adopting this model recently. For example, Google’s Tensor G3 chip has two high-power Prime Cores for a total of nine cores. Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 still has 8 CPU cores, but they are divided differently. At the forefront is the new Cortex X4 Prime core, clocked at 3.3GHz. Qualcomm has increased the number of performance cores to five (Cortex A720) with a maximum clock speed of 3.2GHz. This leaves only two high-efficiency cores (Cortex A520) to handle low-intensity background tasks. These CPUs are clocked at 2.3GHz. Overall, Qualcomm says the CPU is 30% faster and 20% more efficient than the previous generation Snapdragon 8 Gen 2.
More powerful Adreno graphics engine
Snapdragon 8 Gen 3’s updated Adreno GPU also supports a host of new graphics technologies, such as higher-performance hardware-accelerated ray tracing, and new global illumination support in Unreal Engine 5. It also supports displays with up to 240Hz refresh rates, which hypothetically means games can render at 240 fps for improved smoothness and response times.
The chip can also upscale content to 8K external displays (assuming hardware support) and generate game engine frames for smoother, faster rendering via Adreno Frame Motion Engine 2.0. Ray tracing support on Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 is said to be 1.5 times faster than Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, with overall GPU performance improved by 25%. According to reports, Adreno Frame Motion Engine 2.0 will bring huge performance improvements, similar to the frame generation technology on NVIDIA RTX 40 series GPUs.
These features will impact what you already do with your smartphone or tablet, but Qualcomm also hopes to facilitate the development of new generative AI features with Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. The SoC’s Hexagon NPU has been upgraded to the latest version that is 98% faster than before, and the Qualcomm Sensing Center will protect your personal data on the device. This is important because the new Snapdragon can do a lot of AI processing without relying on cloud processing support. Qualcomm says the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 is its first chip capable of running large language models (LLM) and other transformer-based networks on the device, supporting up to 10 billion parameters. It also handles stable diffusion to produce images instantly, again without the need to connect to the cloud.
New powerful camera features, new 5G modem and Snapdragon seamless connection
The cameras in the upcoming devices will also be able to use the Snapdragon chip’s new artificial intelligence capabilities. 8 Gen 3 supports image extensions, adding new content through generative AI similar to tools such as OpenAI’s Dall-e. Supports video object eraser to remove objects from the video after capturing it. Qualcomm also has a feature called Zoom Anyplace, which is optimized for Samsung’s 200MP image sensor. It lets you capture multiple videos simultaneously at 2x and 4x zoom, with object tracking and 4K resolution. So, maybe this is what we can expect from the Galaxy S24 camera in early 2024.
It wouldn’t be a Snapdragon flagship without a new 5G cellular modem, and of course the new X75 modem has been enhanced with machine learning. Qualcomm said the X75 is the world’s first modem equipped with dedicated Tensor AI hardware, helping to increase speed and efficiency. It supports sub-6 and mmWave 5G networks in non-standalone and standalone modes. Under ideal conditions, the X75 can achieve 10Gbps download and 3.5Gbps upload.
There’s also a new communications feature to connect your devices called Snapdragon Seamless. With this cross-platform technology, you’ll be able to move data, experiences and peripherals between Snapdragon-powered devices. For example, you can share files on your PC or mirror your phone’s display. If you have a mouse plugged into your computer, you can easily use it with your phone or tablet. Whether to enable Snapdragon Seamless is up to the original equipment manufacturer (OEM), but Qualcomm says Microsoft, Google, Oppo, Lenovo and others are already on board.
Qualcomm is providing only basic details about the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 platform today. Stay tuned for more information on this latest mobile SoC in the coming days and hopefully some benchmark data.