Qualcomm Launches Snapdragon 8 Elite with Oryon CPU and 40% GPU Performance Boost
After an extended series of leaks, the Snapdragon 8 Elite is now official, set to power the next wave of Android flagship devices. Qualcomm is aligning its naming convention with the ARM-based X Elite laptop chips for consistency.
Like its laptop counterparts, the Snapdragon 8 Elite features an Oryon CPU with a custom eight-core architecture, including 2 prime cores clocked at 4.32 GHz and 6 performance cores running up to 3.53 GHz. This is paired with a cutting-edge 24MB L2 cache and support for 5,300MHz LPDDR5X RAM.
Built on TSMC’s 3nm process, the new chip offers a 45% improvement in CPU performance and a 44% increase in power efficiency over the previous generation.
For graphics, Qualcomm has introduced an upgraded Adreno GPU, delivering a 40% performance boost and power savings, along with enhanced ray-tracing capabilities.
Qualcomm’s latest chip is the first mobile SoC to support Unreal Engine 5.3 and the Nanite virtualized geometry system.
In terms of AI capabilities, the new Hexagon neural processing unit (NPU) offers a 45% increase in speed for AI tasks while improving performance per watt. Qualcomm’s AI Engine now supports multimodal Gen AI, allowing for both large and small models and the ability to handle up to 70 tokens on SLMs.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite features a refined image signal processor (ISP) that works closely with the new Hexagon NPU, resulting in enhanced HDR, more natural skin tones, improved sky colors, and better autofocus performance. Qualcomm has also added chip-level photo and video semantic segmentation, as well as a video object eraser function.
For connectivity, the Snapdragon 8 Elite includes the Snapdragon X80 5G modem, which is the first to support 6x downlink carrier aggregation and AI-driven mmWave range extension. Qualcomm claims peak download speeds of 10 Gbps and a theoretical maximum upload speed of 3.5 Gbps.
The new modem works in conjunction with the FastConnect 7900 Mobile Connectivity System, which is the first to combine Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, and Ultra Wideband connectivity into a single 6nm chip.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite is set to power the next generation of flagship Android smartphones from various brands, including Asus, Honor, iQOO, OnePlus, Oppo, Realme, Samsung, vivo, Xiaomi, and more.
