Semiconductor major Qualcomm Technologies unveiled the Snapdragon 8 Elite Mobile Platform, the next generation of its processor that brings computer-like capabilities to smartphones at its annual Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii on Monday.
The new Snapdragon 8 Elite debuts many of Qualcomm’s latest technologies, including the second-generation custom-built Qualcomm Oryon CPU, Qualcomm Adreno GPU and enhanced Qualcomm Hexagon NPU. With Snapdragon 8 Elite, Qualcomm has also tried to bring in mobile performance improvements and bring Generative AI to various flagship smartphone models that are powered by its Snapdragon platform.
Leading smartphone brands including ASUS, Honor, iQOO, OnePlus, OPPO, RealMe, Samsung, Vivo, Xiaomi, and others are a few that are set to launch devices powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite in the future. Xiaomi also announced that its 15 Series of flagship smartphones to be launched later in October will be the first one to leverage Snapdragon 8 Elite.
Qualcomm promises significant user experience upgrades across camera capabilities, gaming experience, audio quality, and other areas. The chipset is built on TSMC’s second-generation 3nm process and as a result, delivers 45 per cent faster single and multi-core performance while using 27 per cent less power than the previous Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.
Snapdragon 8 Elite will help mobile devices better understand voice, text, images and help users with tasks, ranging from everyday queries and summarisation to advanced content creation. Qualcomm’s proprietary Sensing Hub also understands personal context that allows on-device generative AI assistants to make personalised suggestions.
Delivering his keynote address at the summit, Qualcomm president and CEO Cristiano Amon said the company is in “a process of transformation” and their processor Snapdragon has evolved hugely in the last nine years of their flagship summit. “The new Snapdragon brings in a new generation of AI-first experiences,” he said.
The event also saw virtual appearances by big tech heavyweights including Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, General Motors’ Mary Barra, and Samsung’s mobile chief TM Roh, among others, who all highlighted Qualcomm processors’ support for their AI initiatives.
Automotive solutions formed a big part of the Snapdragon Summit this year as the car becomes a computing space. “The auto industry is going through massive disruptions and the Snapdragon Digital Chassis has been built to support this,” Amon said.
In the area of computing, Qualcomm spoke about its Snapdragon process powering the new Copilot+ PC, a new class of AI-powered PCs by Microsoft.
Among the slew of launches was also that of Qualcomm’s 2nd generation Oryon CPU. The company also took its competitors head-on as the event featured benchmark comparisons with the computer processors of peers such as Intel and AMD.
Chris Patrick, senior vice president and general manager of mobile handsets, Qualcomm Technologies, said that with leading CPU, GPU and NPU capabilities, the Snapdragon 8 Elite will transform mobile experiences for users by offering personalized, multi-modal generative AI directly on the device. “This will enable the understanding of speech, context, and images to enhance everything from productivity to creativity tasks while prioritizing user privacy,” he added.
(The writer was in Hawaii for this event at the invite of Qualcomm Technologies)
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