Qualcomm has officially introduced its highly anticipated flagship processor, the Snapdragon 8 Elite. Dubbed the "world's fastest mobile processor" by the company, let's explore what this chipset offers.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite features 2 high-performance prime cores clocked at 4.32 GHz and 6 performance cores running up to 3.53 GHz, making it an 8-core processor. Qualcomm has moved away from standard ARM designs and implemented its own custom Oryon cores. The processor also includes industry-leading 24MB L2 cache and 5,300 MHz LPDDR5X RAM support.
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Built on TSMC’s 3nm manufacturing process, the processor promises a 45% increase in CPU performance and a 44% improvement in power efficiency compared to its predecessor. On the graphics side, the refreshed Adreno GPU delivers 40% better performance and power savings, along with improved ray tracing performance. Qualcomm’s new chipset is also the first mobile processor to support Unreal Engine 5.3 and the Nanite virtualized geometry system.
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The new Hexagon neural processing unit (NPU) increases the speed of AI tasks by 45%, thanks to enhanced performance per watt. Qualcomm also introduces multi-modal generative AI support, allowing it to handle small and large models with up to 70 tokens in SLM.
Additionally, the Snapdragon 8 Elite gains advanced image signal processing (ISP) capabilities, deeply integrated with the new Hexagon NPU. This provides better HDR, more natural skin tones, enhanced sky colors, and improved autofocus performance. Qualcomm also introduces on-chip photo and video semantic segmentation and video object erasing functions.
In terms of connectivity, the Snapdragon 8 Elite features the Snapdragon X80 5G modem, which is the first to support 6x carrier aggregation and AI-based mmWave range extension. The modem theoretically achieves download speeds of 10 Gbps and upload speeds of up to 3.5 Gbps. The processor also includes the FastConnect 7900 Mobile Connectivity System, which integrates Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, and Ultra-Wideband into a single 6nm chip.
Snapdragon 8 Elite will soon power flagship models from Asus, Honor, iQOO, OnePlus, Oppo, Realme, Samsung, Vivo, and Xiaomi.
