Qualcomm presented the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, the chip prime designed for most smart mobile phones prime which we will start to see launches very soon and which will hit the market over the next 12 months.
The announcement comes just days after main rival MediaTek announced the Dimensity 9200 chip, and like that chip, the 8 Gen 2 uses the latest ARMv9 architecture, with ray tracing enabled by Material and Wi-Fi 7 support. Everything is built under the TSMC 4nm node.
Competition is healthy and this is always great news for the mobile phone industry. However, if you want to know the improvements and differences of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 with its main competitor, keep reading.
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The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 will be in many phones
If there is something decisive in a chip, it is to be able to estimate the number of phones in which it will be present. As a flagship processor, no one doubts that the new 8 Gen 2 will be part of many new phones.
As far as we know, Qualcomm has planned the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 to be among phones from 17 different manufacturers, including brands like Xiaomi, Sony, and Oppo. The latter has confirmed that it will use the chip in its flagship Oppo Find X6.
There are also other brands that seem obvious, such as Samsung, since the company has signed a global agreement with Qualcomm to supply the chips for the future Galaxy S23 series.
There’s also the Vivo X90 series which will launch in China next week and will likely use 8 Gen 2 in at least one model. Xiaomi, for its part, has big plans for its Xiaomi 13 series which will arrive this year.
Looking ahead to 2023, other brands that may confirm their adoption are Oppo with the Find X6 and the OnePlus 11 smartphone.
The list of manufacturers is always a show of strength for Qualcomm, especially compared to the launch of the Dimensity 9200 the week before. So far, only Vivo has officially confirmed that it will use the MediaTek chip.
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Qualcomm changes on silicon
The 8 Gen 2 is similar in many ways to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1because like the previous generation chip, it is built with a 4nm manufacturing process using the ARMv9 architecture.
However, if we take a closer look at the Kryo processor, it is possible to see that things are different. For one, the chip was fabricated on TSMC’s 4nm node, seen as a step up from the process Samsung used last year.
It also uses this year’s 64-bit ARMv9 cores, but more importantly, it adapts them to a new configuration. In fact, the processor’s eight cores are led by a Cortex-X3 main core, clocked at 3.2 GHz.
The X3 is joined by four 2.8GHz performance cores, more than the three used in last year’s 8 Gen 1 and MediaTek’s Dimensity 9200.
Even more curiously, they’re split between two pairs of the new Cortex-A715 and the older A710: a move to ensure compatibility with 32-bit applications that the new 64-bit kernels would otherwise leave behind.
With four performance cores, there’s only room for three 2.0 GHz Cortex-A510 efficiency cores. Switching to performance priority could help 8th Gen perform well in demanding games (Qualcomm claims the chip is up to 35% faster than last year).
But the big question right now is whether the overheating issues and deteriorating battery life that plagued phones in 2022 with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip will get any worse.
Qualcomm seems to think that won’t be a problem, saying that despite the redesign, the 8 Gen 2 is still 40% more power efficient than the 8 Gen 1. To be fair, the company has improved the issues with the 8 significantly. + latest summer update.
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Ray tracing support
Speaking of gaming, Qualcomm’s GPU upgrades should also help. Unlike MediaTek, the company didn’t use the ARM-ready Immortalis-G715 GPU on the chip.
The Adreno GPU used this year has exactly the same nice point of hardware ray tracing support.
While last year’s flagship phones had to use software to drive a rudimentary version of the latest graphics trend that simulates individual light beams to improve highlights and shadows, the 8 Gen 2 has dedicated hardware for this. effect.
This should improve both performance and power efficiency, and it’s the latter where Qualcomm seems to have a big advantage.
The extent of its help will ultimately depend on how many games they make with full support for the feature, but Qualcomm is partnering with Tencent and other publishers to accelerate adoption.
He also says that gamers can expect 25% faster graphics performance across the board, so there will be improvements in almost every game one way or another.
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Wi-Fi 7 is (almost) here
MediaTek may have beaten Qualcomm with last week’s “Wi-Fi 7 ready” Dimensity 9200, but it’s no surprise that the standard next-gen connectivity feature is also present here.
Like the previous 6E standard, WiFi 7 uses a third band of 6 GHz, alongside existing 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz options, reducing network congestion while enabling faster speeds and more reliable connections.
There’s only one problem, and that’s that the WiFi 7 has not yet been officially certified and the routers real do not yet exist. But they should be rolling out over the next year, and when they do, the next generation of phones will be ready for the new connectivity.
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Everything has AI, even the cameras
Qualcomm has always focused on AI and machine learning performance, but this year that might be more true than ever.
The keys to the AI upgrades lie in the Hexagon AI chip’s support of the INT4 standard, which not only enables more efficient AI processing by running 32-bit models without loss of precision, but up to 4 bits, hence the Name.
This should make AI processing more energy efficient, but also faster, with the ability to run more machine learning processes simultaneously.
But Qualcomm has upgraded AI almost everywhere, perhaps especially in the new “cognitive ISP” (image signal processor). This allows the phone’s cameras to access hardware-enabled AI features.
An example of this would be to split an image into separate objects and layers to optimize each separately, which would normally only be handled by post-processing.
The result is that the mobile camera app’s viewfinder should now show you the shot you’re actually going to get, ending the guessing game of how the shots will actually turn out.
Video capture should also be greatly improved, with all those AI tweaks being applied in real time as you record, while AI processors will also kick in to improve facial recognition and autofocus.
Some simpler AI features will also launch with the “constant sensing camera”, introduced with last year’s 8 Gen 1 and enhanced here.
You can stop showing notifications when it detects another face in front of the phone to protect your privacy, recognize your face orientation to prevent the phone from switching between portrait and landscape when you don’t want it, and even scan QR codes without unlocking the phone.
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 was announced at annual summit on Snapdragon Summit of Qualcomm which takes place every year around this time. It is possible that in the coming days we will continue to inquire about the news of the company.
As the new generation of mobiles arrives, you can take a look at our ranking of High smart phones what can you buy currently.
Original article published in TechAdvisor.com.
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