The new Snapdragon 8 Elite, the best processor for Android phones, has the power of a laptop

From the Hawaiian paradise lands of the island of Maui, Qualcomm has also not missed this year its most important event on the calendar in which it presents to the world the next steps of its processors. The company, with a high market share in Europe thanks to smart phonespresented the new generation of its most powerful chip: the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite.

The approach of this new platform meant a very significant change in the internal architecture of the processorlargely thanks to the integration of the second generation of Oryon that we saw first-hand in EL ESPAÑOL – Omicrono. This CPU, in its first edition, was presented just a year ago and marked the while of the Californian company in the Windows 11 computer segment.

Following this launch, certain technology companies such as Microsoft, Asus and Acer presented their first products throughout the year – mainly laptops and convertibles – with a high dose of game and artificial intelligence within the devices themselves.

Now, with the second generation of the Oryon processor, Qualcomm is looking to revolutionize the gaming landscape. smart phonesaiming for the highest reach. “We are delighted to bring the the power of Qualcomm Oryon on our mobile platforms Snapdragon for the first time,” Chris Patrick, senior vice president and general manager of mobile devices at Qualcomm, said on stage.

“Earlier this year we launched it on PC, delivering extraordinary experiences and unrivaled autonomy to computer users, which has energized the industry and captured the attention of consumers,” Patrick continued in his speech.

Performance in abundance

Although it’s based on last year’s laptop processor, Qualcomm has insisted that it has developed an entirely new microarchitecture for the Snapdragon 8 Elite, which includes the second generation of the Oryon processor. The combination of these two factors makes the processor 46% more efficient compared to previous schemes, while increasing power and adding some important features.

In this edition, the CPU eliminates the so-called “efficient” cores which, in recent years, were already gradually being withdrawn. The internal layout is now divided into two types of cores: Excellent performance; who will be responsible for carrying out a large part of the tasks in the smart phones.

Qualcomm deploys 2 Prime cores at a frequency of 4.32 GHz which They will work on the most complex and heavy tasks which require a large dose of raw power. In them they have incorporated the new Instant Wake technology which allows the “immediate” execution of the next task in queue thanks to the addition of new material Yes software.

The other 6 cores that make up the Snapdragon 8 Elite operate at a frequency of 3.53 GHz and, as explained, They represent the balance between power and efficiency. The company therefore decided to eliminate the cores which, until this last generation, were dedicated to performing the lightest tasks within devices.

The new processor also integrates new cache memories in the cores and allows greater bandwidth in its connection with RAM memory. With all this heavy artillery on the table, Qualcomm then focused on gameone of the most demanding sectors that requires new developments and improvements every year.

As noted, the Snapdragon 8 Elite achieves a 40% improvement in efficiency in video games thanks to the Adreno GPU. In conjunction with the Oryon processor, the data provided by Qualcomm during the presentation indicates that it manages to improve by up to 50%.

Among the most important new features presented at the Maui event is compatibility with graphics engines Chaos Physics Unreal Engine and Unreal Engine 5. The latter allows a notable increase in the geometric complexity of the textures and makes it possible to obtain a “cinematic quality video game rendering”, as they claim. Added to this is the improvement of Ray Tracing technology, which is responsible for improving the lighting within compatible titles.

Applications with AI

Qualcomm has redoubled its commitment to functions using artificial intelligence in this Snapdragon 8 Elite. The company has been working on its Hexagon Neural Processing Unit (NPU) for several generations, which now includes multimodal generative capabilities within the device itselfwhat they have already demonstrated in the laptops presented in recent months.

In previous processors, commands, commands and guest that the user gave out loud had to be converted to text so that the AI ​​could understand. A extra work that hampered the experience of the user by delaying the response in time and, sometimes, leading to loss of information during transcription.

Now, multimodal AI understands the user’s voice commands and provides a faster yet more accurate result. Now you can also get data directly from other types of sources such as audio, sounds, photos, videos, images captured in real time with the phone camera or text; And process them on the device without the need for an internet connection. Until now, built-in AI could only use text, voice and images.

THE performance improvement is 45% for each wattas they commented during the presentation. “With industry-leading CPU, GPU and NPU capabilities, the Snapdragon 8 Elite delivers dramatic improvements in performance and power efficiency,” said Chris Patrick.

“In addition, it revolutionizes mobile experiences by offering personalized multimodal generative artificial intelligence directly on the device, enabling understanding of speech, context and images to improve everything,” he explains. “From productivity to creative tasks, while prioritizing user privacy.”

Camera improvements

The photo and video section also played a very representative role during the presentation of the new Snapdragon 8 Elite. Developments in this segment have been closely linked to artificial intelligence, the Hexagon NPU and the combination with cameras.

The processor, thanks to the triple AI ISP, is now capable of works with up to 3 x 48 megapixel cameras and at 30 frames per second at the same time. Thanks to this and AI, the Snapdragon can now apply advanced image enhancement algorithms that, until now, could only be performed with an Internet connection or by uploading media content to the cloud. A process that other processors such as Google Tensors perform using the Internet.

One of the innovations combining cameras and artificial intelligence is Insight AI. It uses the Hexagon NPU to segment the captured image into layers (it can exceed 250 units) and recognize lighting conditions to improve the result final result obtained by the user, both in photo and video.

Likewise, Qualcomm presented Real-time relight function. Thanks to this application, the user will be able to choose the light source during a video call, which is particularly useful for illuminating the face in low light conditions. For example, you can configure the photo location and adjust its intensity or let the AI ​​do it automatically.

The last of the characteristics presented is that of video object eraser. This is one of the most used functions to eliminate elements that interrupt photos, such as objects or people that the user does not want to appear. Doing it in video format is a really complicated task because it requires eliminating the intruder frame by frame.

With the Snapdragon 8 Elite, the AI ​​will take care of removing unwanted objects in images fully automatic thanks to algorithms. In addition, to maintain privacy and security, this process is carried out entirely on the device itself with the new Qualcomm processor.