On October 21, 2024, Qualcomm introduced its latest flagship mobile SoC, the Snapdragon 8 Elite, which succeeds the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, launched on October 24, 2023. Qualcomm has not confirmed whether a Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 is in development.

Built on a 3nm (nanometers) TSMC transistor process, a reduction from the previous generation’s 4nm, the Snapdragon 8 Elite offers improved efficiency. Qualcomm claims the new chip delivers 44% better CPU power efficiency than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.

The Snapdragon 8 Elite features a custom Oryon CPU, replacing the ARM-based Kryo CPU from previous models. This redesign removes “efficiency” cores in favor of “performance” cores for enhanced processing power.

Among its standout features is the upgraded Qualcomm AI Engine, which promises significant improvements over the previous model. Additionally, the new Adreno GPU is built on a sliced architecture, boosting power efficiency and performance by 40%. The redesigned Hexagon NPU delivers up to 45% faster AI performance and better energy efficiency, making the Snapdragon 8 Elite a powerful upgrade over its predecessor.

During the launch event, HONOR, Xiaomi, and Asus confirmed that the Snapdragon Elite 8 will power their upcoming flagship phones, the Magic7 Series, the Xiaomi 15 series, and the Rog 9, respectively. Oneplus confirmed in a social media video on Weibo that its upcoming OnePlus 13 will launch with the Snapdragon Elite 8. Other phone brands, including Realme, Vivo and Nubia confirmed featuring the new chip in their high-end devices.

Oryon CPU 2^nd Gen With Improved Performance Over The Previous Kryo Architecture

Snapdragon 8 Elite Oryon CPU 2nd Gen

The Qualcomm Oryon CPU, initially introduced in Snapdragon X series processors for Windows laptops, has been adapted for mobile in the Snapdragon 8 Elite. The Oryon CPU 2nd Gen includes two Prime cores, each clocked at 4.32 GHz, and six Performance cores at 3.8 GHz.

This new custom design marks a departure from the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3’s Kryo CPU, which is built on an ARM-based architecture and features a mix of one 3.3 GHz Prime core, six 3.2 GHz Performance cores, and two 2.3 Ghz Efficiency cores.

Qualcomm claims the Oryon 2nd Gen is the world’s fastest mobile CPU. To confirm the bold statement, we need to compare real-life benchmarks with MediaTek’s recently announced flagship, the Dimensity 9400. By removing the efficiency cores, Qualcomm seems to follow the “All-Big-Core” design trend set by MediaTek last year.

The shift to Performance cores allows the Elite 8 to optimize power usage while maintaining high performance. The Performance cores scale down power when workloads are light but ramp up when computational demands increase.

The Oryon Prime cores’ “Instant Awake” feature uses new data cache prefetchers for improved performance, allowing near-instantaneous core operation by removing the need for a reset code sequence. The CPU also benefits from increased cache, with 12MB of L2 cache for the two Prime cores and another 12MB for the six performance cores. This 50% cache increase compared to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, which featured only one unified 12 MB L3 cache for all eight cores (note that L3 cache is slower than L2 cache).

Additionally, faster LP-DDR5x memory with 5.3 GHz data transfer speed (over 4.8 GHz previously) enhances the overall performance of the Snapdragon 8 Elite.

Adreno GPU With New Sliced Architecture For Better Performance And Power Efficiency

Snapdragon 8 Elite’s Adreno GPU with sliced architecture

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite offers notable advancements in mobile gaming, particularly in power efficiency and performance compared to its predecessor, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. The company reports that the Snapdragon 8 Elite extends gaming sessions by 2.5 hours, thanks to improved power management, while also delivering smoother gameplay with higher frame rates.

A key enhancement is the new Adreno GPU, which features a sliced architecture with dedicated memory for each slice. This design boosts power efficiency by 40%, increases performance by 40%, and improves ray tracing capabilities by 35% over the previous generation.

This sliced architecture enables multiple identical GPU blocks (used for scaling) to run independently from a power and frequency point of view. Slices with a lower workload consume as little as possible, potentially leaving room for diverting power and increasing frequency to the busiest slice.

A significant new feature of the 8 Elite is its support for Unreal’s Chaos Physics Engine. This system processes real-time game physics directly on the device, utilizing all Oryon CPU cores. Qualcomm claims the chip can simulate 9000 unique objects and handle collisions and destruction of over 1000 objects with under 5 ms of latency.

This claim is challenging to assess because performance depends on the complexity of each object, which is determined by the structure of the collision meshes. More complex objects look more realistic and require proportionally complex collision representations.

The Oryon CPU helps increase gaming performance by speeding up pre-rendering tasks like physics and by feeding graphics data to the GPU faster during the final rendering. Qualcomm claims up to 50% CPU performance uplift in gaming applications.

The Snapdragon 8 Elite supports Unreal Engine 5’s Nanite technology for the first time on mobile and is exclusive to Snapdragon-powered devices. Nanite on Elite 8 delivers a significant increase in geometric complexity and enables film-quality 3D scene rendering on Qualcomm-powered smartphones.

Upgraded Qualcomm AI Engine With On-device Multimodal Gen AI

The Snapdragon 8 Elite handles AI tasks using various specialized units depending on the nature of the algorithms and the models. Qualcomm’s AI Engine integrates the Oryon CPU, the Adreno GPU, the Hexagon NPU, the Sensing Hub, and the Memory block to process different types of AI workloads.

“The Oryon CPU is a great addition for processing latency critical AI tasks,” said Francisco Cheng, Senior Director, Product Marketing, Qualcomm. “It helps initiate all the AI workloads and facilitates them throughout the AI Engine. It takes on the heavy lifting while the other parts of the AI can focus on AI-specific tasks.”

At the heart of the AI Engine lies the Hexagon NPU, which has been significantly upgraded from the previous Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.

The new NPU includes a Tensor accelerator for large vision models (LVM) and traditional AI acceleration, an 8-core Scalar accelerator for large language models (LLM) and classic AI, and a 6-core Vector accelerator designed for long-context support. Qualcomm added two cores to both the Scalar and the Vector accelerators compared to the previous generation. Additionally, these new accelerators deliver higher throughput for all cores, making the system more performant.

Moreover, the LP-DDR5x memory, running at 5.3 GHz, plays a crucial role in boosting AI performance. Qualcomm’s new NPU architecture supports concurrency, allowing AI and computer vision tasks to operate simultaneously in memory, enhancing overall processing efficiency.

Editor’s note: Please note that a System-on-Chip (SoC) is very complex, and I bet that Qualcomm is simplifying how all the Processing Units interact with each other so it can be explained more clearly to non-experts. 

What Does On-device Multimodal Gen AI Do For Smartphone Users?

Qualcomm’s new AI Engine, integrated into the Snapdragon 8 Elite, brings significant advancements in on-device multimodal Gen AI compared to last year’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.

Thanks to various AI models, including large multimodal models (LMM), large language models (LLMs), and large vision models (LVMs), the multimodal Gen AI running on the Elite 8 can understand voice, text and images. It no longer needs to convert speech to text before processing voice tokens through the LLM to provide answers via speech.

The new AI Engine version can even see the world through the phone’s camera to accomplish various tasks, from simple queries and summarization to content creation. For example, users can take a photo of a restaurant receipt and ask the AI assistant to split the bill. Additionally, the new system’s long context support allows it to process longer token* inputs, such as documents or books, and offer expert assistance based on the uploaded information.

Qualcomm promises that the AI assistant operates entirely on-device, providing a personalized experience. The updated Sensing Hub plays a crucial role in these improvements, offering 60% better AI performance and featuring 34% more memory than its predecessor. These enhancements enable faster, more efficient processing for AI-driven tasks across various applications.

*Editor’s note: a token can be a word, an image or a spoken word.

New AI ISP for Enhanced On-device AI-driven Image Processing

The redesigned AI ISP (Image Signal Processor) in the Snapdragon 8 Elite, formerly known as the Cognitive ISP in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, significantly improves image processing performance. With a 35% increase in pixel throughput and an impressive speed of 4.3 gigapixels per second, the new AI ISP enables advanced photography and video capabilities.

Notably, it supports triple 48MP video capture at 30 FPS and 320-megapixel photo capture, compared to last year’s triple 36MP 30 FPS video capture and 200-megapixel photo capture. Additionally, the “Zero Shutter Lag” feature ensures that these high-quality images are captured instantly.

One of the key upgrades is the revamped Hexagon Direct Link, which allows the AI ISP to access the RAW image sensor directly, bypassing the Hexagon NPU. This innovation augments the data transfer speed, enabling real-time AI-based enhancements for 4K video at 60 FPS. The increased processing power of the Snapdragon 8 Elite also brings cloud-level AI features directly to the device, enhancing the user experience by ensuring better privacy and security.

Qualcomm’s Insight AI suite offers tools for semi-automatic image editing, including Limitless Segmentation, which can now identify and mask up to 250 layers, a substantial increase from the 12-layer capability in the previous generation. This new feature allows the user to refine every area of the photo easily.

The Realtime Skin and Sky feature uses AI to adjust lighting conditions, ensuring natural skin tones and true sky colors, even in challenging environments.

Additionally, the AI Portrait Realtime Re-lighting feature improves video call image quality by automatically adjusting lighting on the caller’s face.

Another standout feature is Video Object Eraser, which allows users to highlight and remove objects from videos in real-time at 30 FPS, a capability previously unavailable on-device with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.

AI-enhanced 5G and WI-FI 7 connectivity

The Snapdragon X80 5G Modem-RF System, succeeding the Snapdragon X75, combines Qualcomm’s 5G technology with a 2nd Gen AI processor to enhance 5G performance and deliver multi-gigabit speeds. It offers 30% improved location accuracy, even in challenging environments like parking structures, and introduces the first 4×6 MIMO solution and AI-based multi-antenna management. Additionally, it supports NB-NTN satellite connectivity.

Qualcomm’s FastConnect 7900 Mobile Connectivity System is considered the most advanced Wi-Fi 7 solution, providing up to 40% more power efficiency compared to the FastConnect 7800. It supports High Band Simultaneous Multi-Link, offering some of the fastest Wi-Fi speeds globally. The FastConnect 7900 is also the first single-chip solution to integrate Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Ultra-Wideband (UWB), enabling proximity-based capabilities like finding lost items or accessing secure buildings. Qualcomm XPAN also delivers premium lossless audio for an enhanced audio experience.

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