Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 Specifications Leaked
Qualcomm will unveil the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 at the Qualcomm Summit on October 24-26, but now leaked specs for the Snapdragon 8Gen 4 have emerged. This leak has some interesting aspects about Qualcomm’s chipset architecture and strategy changes.
The digital chat station shared that Qualcomm will launch the Snapdragon 8Gen4 at the end of 2024. The source mentioned that Qualcomm will switch to the self-developed Nuvia CPU architecture.
In 2021, Qualcomm acquired Nuvia for $1.4 billion. This is seen as a move by Qualcomm to bring in designs and expertise to create or customize Arm CPU cores to compete with Apple. It has been speculated that Qualcomm may use Nuvia’s blueprints for smartphones. “Phoenix,” on the other hand, could be a renamed version of Oryon, Qualcomm’s custom CPU core.
Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 uses an eight-core setup, including 2 Phoenix performance cores and 6 Phoenix M cores. To deliver powerful performance, the chip will be processed using TSMC’s 3nm technology.
As a comparison, the currently leaked Snapdragon 8Gen3 specifications will adopt the “1 + 5 + 2” configuration architecture , that is, Snapdragon 8 Gen3: TSMC N4P process, CPU 1*X4+5*A720+2*A520, GPU Adreno 750 . Manufacturing at the N4P node will allow the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 to deliver better performance without sacrificing power consumption.
According to TSMC, 3nm technology (N3) will be another advanced full node for 5nm technology (N5). It offers state-of-the-art foundry technology in PPA and transistor technology. TSMC promises that N3 technology will provide logic density gains of up to 70%. Compared with N5 technology, the speed is increased by 15% at the same power, and the power is reduced by 30% at the same speed.
Currently, there is no information about smartphones with this chipset. However, Qualcomm’s self-developed architecture needs to pass power consumption verification and compatibility. Since Apple has a closed device ecosystem, it doesn’t need to worry about extensive verification. Unlike Apple, Qualcomm is a third-party seller of chips that will be used in different phones.
Therefore, chips from Qualcomm to MediaTek need to be verified and optimized with all buyers before they are released. Just as the digital chat station said in response to whether the new chip architecture is stable: Qualcomm’s self-developed architecture really needs to get a sample adjustment to know the energy consumption and compatibility, and the uncertainty is higher.
