Qualcomm officially released a new generation of flagship mobile processors: the mainstream Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 and the more powerful Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 with advanced artificial intelligence capabilities.
Image source: Qualcomm
Compared with the previous generation platform, the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 promises a 13% increase in CPU performance while reducing power consumption by 37%. GPU speed is increased by 44% and efficiency is increased by 40%. The AI accelerator (NPU) speed is increased by 35%, and the performance per watt is increased by 33%. Of course, in reality, all of these metrics depend on the specific smartphone model and its cooling system.
The CPU includes six Qualcomm Oryon cores: two main cores with a clock frequency of 5 GHz and four production cores with a frequency of up to 4 GHz; Qualcomm Oryon Flex Cache with a capacity of 16 MB; the chip is manufactured using 2nm technology.
The main difference between the Extreme version and the regular Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 is the performance of AI tasks. Higher-order processors focus on the work of artificial intelligence agents that take into account the user’s context and preferences and perform actions independently on the user’s behalf. The Oryon central processing unit, Hexagon neural processor and sensor hub components are responsible for performing these tasks. The smartphone processes the user’s habits, environmental data and takes into account previous actions, helping the AI adapt to the situation when interacting with multiple applications.
The old Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 supports local activation of AI models with a Mixture of Experts architecture and a parameter scale of more than 30 billion. To meet the needs of the neural processor, the Extreme chip allocates up to 50% more memory than the regular version. Its NPU contains 12 scalars, 8 vectors, 1 tensor and 1 basic computing unit; supports INT2, INT4, INT8, INT16, FP8 and FP16 data formats – they can be combined in a single task. The Qualcomm Sensing Hub component includes two small NPUs to process voice, sound and sensor data; and two ISPs to process data from the camera – allowing the smartphone to continuously analyze the situation without using a power-hungry main processor. In practice, the device can analyze mail correspondence and respond in the user’s style, as well as edit images according to the user’s personal preferences – without even always having to formulate a request.
The graphics subsystem includes dedicated matrix computing cores for artificial intelligence tasks; Adreno Neural Fusion technology allows you to offload part of the AI calculations from the graphics pipeline to dedicated units, reducing the load on the main graphics processor. It has 18MB of high-performance Adreno high-performance memory, and its architecture helps reduce power consumption by 12%. Adreno Neural Fusion is responsible for AI upgrade technology: resolution enhancement and frame generation.
The chip supports 8K resolution video recording up to 60 FPS and 4K video recording up to 240 frames per second; it not only supports the use of complex color correction during the post-production process of the material, but also supports the use of complex color correction during shooting. There are separate color correction functions for skies and skin tones; there are noise reduction algorithms for shooting in low-light conditions, and support for the Advanced Professional Video (APV) professional audio codec.
Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 processor supports AI audio separation function – intelligently separates audio elements, including sound and environmental noise; AI speech bubbles allow you to record videos with voice even in noisy environments; the spatial audio renderer is responsible for spatial video functions and tracking the user’s head position.
The Qualcomm X105 modem takes care of mobile communications – it supports 5G Advanced networks, including sub-6 GHz and millimeter wave bands; the maximum declared speed is 14.8 Gbit/s on the incoming channel and 4.2 Gbit/s on the outgoing channel. Supports direct satellite connection using NR-NTN and NB-NTN standards. FastConnect 8800 components support Wi-Fi 8, Bluetooth 6.0, UWB and Thread.
The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 processor supports up to 24GB of LPDDR5x/LPDDR6 RAM, built-in UFS 5.0 storage, USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports, displays up to 4K (120Hz) or QHD+ (240Hz), and external displays up to 8K (30Hz).
The first smartphones powered by flagship Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 and Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 chips will be released this year.
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