Qualcomm said at the Snapdragon Summit last year that it would bring the Snapdragon X Elite's bonkers custom Oryon cores to mobile in 2024. Today, at Snapdragon Summit 2024, it has followed through on that promise.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite is Qualcomm's latest flagship chipset, and as promised, it features the custom Oryon cores, bringing power and performance never before witnessed on mobile devices, in addition to a whole host of other improvements.
Custom Oryon cores will power the promised generative AI future for mobile devices
These aren't just plug-and-play Oryon cores that have been ported over from the Snapdragon X Elite. Qualcomm has built the Snapdragon 8 Elite's Oryon cores from the ground up for mobile, creating what it claims is the “fastest mobile CPU in the world” with peak CPU speeds of 4.32 GHz on the prime cores.
In addition to the prime cores, there are six new performance cores at 3.53GHz. There are no efficiency cores, which is hardly surprising as Qualcomm has gradually been reducing them over time in its chipsets. Last year's Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 was down to just two efficiency cores. Total L2 cache on the Elite chip is at 24MB – that's 12MB per cluster, with each core being provided additional L1 cache.
The 3nm Snapdragon 8 Elite also has support for the fastest 5.3GHz LPDDR5x memory. The microarchitecture improvements have resulted in a new feature called instant wake, whereby frequent power cycling of individual cores is mitigated using hardware that allows the core to execute the next instruction immediately.
What all this means for the user experience is that smartphones with the Snapdragon 8 Elite will provide faster app launches, improved multi-tasking, and impressive generative AI capabilities.
The claimed 45% improvement in CPU performance sounds wonderful, but surely that would require a lot of power to sustain, right? Well, Qualcomm also reassuringly cites a 44% power efficiency improvement as well as a 27% bump in overall power savings compared to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.
The new chip significantly elevates gaming performance. The Snapdragon 8 Elite features Qualcomm's first-ever Adreno GPU with a sliced architecture. The result is a whopping 40% GPU performance improvement and a similar improvement in power efficiency.
This is also the first mobile chipset to have support for Unreal Engine 5.3 with Nanite to deliver a gaming experience on mobile like never before. Ray tracing performance has improved by 35% compared to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite impressively builds upon the AI foundation laid by last year's chipset with support for multimodal generative AI applications. That's thanks to the new Hexagon NPU that's 45% faster and offers similar improved performance per watt.
For users, this means AI features that are easier to interact with and can even see what you're seeing throughout the device's camera to help with various tasks, with much of it being processed entirely on device for enhanced privacy.
A new AI ISP built from the ground up for deep integration with the Hexagon NPU will enhance mobile photography, bringing AI enhancements to autofocus, auto white balance, and auto exposure, key elements of mobile photography.
Features like AI-based Pet Capture will allow you to take clear images of your pets even if they have the zoomies. Video Object Eraser will work on-device to let you remove unwanted elements from videos. And with real-time Insight AI, videos will benefit from the power of Limitless Segmentation for more natural skin and sky tones.
Qualcomm has done its job. Now, it's up to device manufacturers to bring this chipset to the masses with new flagship phones. Unsurprisingly, quite a few are slated to launch new smartphones powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite in the coming weeks. The list includes Samsung, obviously. It's already been rumored that the Galaxy S25 Ultra is likely going to use the Snapdragon 8 Elite globally.
Disclaimer: Qualcomm is hosting a large group of international media for the Snapdragon Summit 2024 from October 21-23 in Hawaii, including SamMobile. All opinions and analyses remain our own with Qualcomm receiving no advance preview or exercising any control over our coverage.
