The Launch of Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2

 Qualcomm presented its new System-on-a-Chip (SoC) Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 at its Snapdragon Summit. I was there and had the opportunity to talk to the Qualcomm experts and see the first demos.

Specifications of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2

With the new 1+4+3 core configuration, the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is more efficient and faster than its predecessor Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. According to Qualcomm, it is 40 percent more efficient and 35 percent faster. The prime core is an ARM Cortex X3 clocked at 3.2 GHz.

The four performance cores are two ARM Cortex A-710 clocked at 2.8 GHz and two ARM Cortex A715, also clocked at 2.8 GHz. The three efficiency cores are ARM Cortex A510 with 2 GHz clock rate. The Adreno GPU now supports Vulkan 1.3 and is 25 percent faster and 45 percent more efficient compared to its predecessor.

The new SoC is manufactured in the 4nm manufacturing process by the contract manufacturer TSMC and is expected to be used in the first devices this year. More on that later in the article.

Features of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2

Of course, there are also new functions, for example the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is the first chip from Qualcomm to offer hardware ray tracing. On the opening keynote there were also some graphics demos from Qualcomm and game developers. We can definitely expect some cool mobile games here that can come up with impressive graphics with ray tracing.

Gaijin Entertainment's mobile game War Thunder already showed in-game raytracing integration. Qualcomm's graphics demo showed what's graphically possible here and the differences between activated and deactivated ray tracing were impressive.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is also the first SoC that makes it possible to use 5G on two SIM cards at the same time with its X70 modem. The X70 supports all 5G bands in the 600 Mhz to 41 GHz range. Up to 10 Gbit/s in the downlink and 3.5 Gbit/s in the uplink are achieved here. Wi-Fi 7 is now also supported, as well as Bluetooth 5.3 LE.

Artificial intelligence

Of course, artificial intelligence should not be missing either. The AI ​​functions of the new chip are used in various areas. This is especially visible in the camera. In this way, different areas in images are already recognized during recording by semantic segmentation in real time.

These can be enhanced either during or after the recording. For example, in landscape shots, the sky is recognized and made a little bluer. In other examples, the lawn was made sharper and greener, or people's faces were improved. The special feature here is of course that the remaining areas remain untouched and therefore the complete image is not changed as with a filter.

The resulting images are thus enhanced by the AI, which was very impressive. The ISP of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 has also been optimized for the new image sensors from Samsung and Sony, starting with the new Samsung ISOCELL HP3 with a resolution of 200 megapixels.

Videos can be encoded at 8K 30fps. 4K with up to 120fps and 720p with up to 960fps. Incidentally, 64-megapixel photos can also be taken here during 8K video recording.

First smartphones

The first smartphones with the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 will be presented later this year. Since the Snapdragon Summit took place about three weeks earlier, the smartphone manufacturers still have time to integrate the chip into their devices this year.

The first hardware partners named included ASUS, Honor, Motorola, OnePlus, Sharp, Sony, Vivo, Xiaomi and ZTE. However, which of the manufacturers will install the new Qualcomm chip this year has not been mentioned. Here we have to be patient for the ideas of the hardware partners.

At the CES 2023 and the Mobile World Congress 2023 at the latest, however, we will certainly be expecting a large number of new devices with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2.