He Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 It’s finally official and Qualcomm has made it clear that it wants to make the most of the artificial intelligence craze. The new chip for high-end mobile phones, which was presented alongside the Snapdragon X Elite for computers, comes with several technical innovations. Although the most notable thing is that it is the first of its kind in support the execution of multimodal generative AI models.
This means that smartphones incorporating the new SoC will be capable of running massive language models (LLM) such as LLaMA 2, from Meta, Whisper, from OpenAI, Ernie 3.5, from Baidu, or Stable Difussion, from Stability AI, among others. But not only that, since it is also compatible with speech recognition technologies and other systems based on machine learning.
The new capabilities of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 focused on artificial intelligence take advantage of the improved AI Engine from Qualcomm. This engine is supported by the 8-core Kyro CPU, the Adreno GPU and the Hexagon neural processing unit (NPU).
But the new mobile SoC is not only capable of running multimodal generative AI models of up to 10 billion parameters. It also applies technology in functions that may be of everyday use for ordinary people; For example:
- Expand photographs beyond their original limits.
- Delete unwanted objects in a video.
- Create backgrounds for videos or optimize the quality of recordings in nighttime environments.
- Use 3D ToF cameras to achieve higher resolution depth mapping.
According to Qualcomm, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 NPU is 98% faster and optimizes performance per watt by up to 40% compared to the previous generation SoC.
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 arrives with promises of great performance
Of course, not everything is generative AI in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. Qualcomm’s new mobile chip arrives with the promise of great performancewhich is logical if we consider that it will be present in the next flagships of more than a dozen brands.
The SoC includes a 4-nanometer Kyro CPU with 8 cores. What stands out here is that these have been distributed in a different way than seen in previous years. There is a primary core, which reaches a speed of 3.3 GHz; while another 5 cores The performance ones reach a frequency of 3.2 GHz. For their part, the two efficiency ones can reach 2.3 GHz. According to Qualcomm, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 CPU offers 30% more performance and is 20% more efficient.
The Adreno GPU improves both performance and energy efficiency by 25 percent. Also, the ray tracing or ray tracing is 40% better. And this last point is really interesting, since Qualcomm maintains that this new generation of its mobile chip has been designed to bring the experience gaming to another level.
In fact, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 will support for ray tracing hardware accelerated with indirect lighting; the latter, thanks to Unreal Engine 5.2. Likewise, it will allow you to play at up to 240 frames per second on screens with a refresh rate of 240 Hz.
More features
Mobile phones with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 will be able to use 4K screens, although they will be limited to a refresh rate of 60 Hz. If they want to reach 144 Hz, they must use QHD+ panels. Additionally, there will be support for an adaptive refresh rate of 1 to 240Hz in other resolutions. As for external displays, it will be compatible with resolutions up to 8K at 30 Hz, or up to 1080p at 240 Hz.
When it comes to multimedia, there are also interesting developments. Qualcomm has decided to give an important place to capturing HDR content, allowing the taking of photos of up to 64 MP and the recording of video in 8K at 30 frames per second using this technology. As for video, the supported standards are HDR10, HDR10+, Dolby Vision and HLG; while for photography there will be compatibility with the Ultra HDR format that Google presented at I/O 2023.
If we focus on the audio, the integration of the Qualcomm Aqstic codec and spatial audio technology with head tracking stands out.
Connectivity is another section that Qualcomm proudly boasts in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. The new chip for smartphones incorporates a 5G modem —the Snapdragon X75— which stands out for being the first to incorporate hardware acceleration optimized with artificial intelligence. Likewise, it supports WiFi 7 through FastConnect 7800.
Finally, it is important to note that the new SoC incorporates Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 5 fast charging technology. While it is compatible with LPDDR5X RAM memories of up to 24 GB and 4800 MHz and UFS 4.0 internal storage units.
What phones will arrive with the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3
Qualcomm claims the first flagships with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 They will arrive in the next few weeks. It is likely that we will not have to wait too long, since this Thursday the 26th the Xiaomi 14 would be launched, which would be the first to incorporate the new SoC.
Among the manufacturers that will use this platform, not only does this Chinese brand appear, but also OnePlus, OPPO, Asus, Realme, Honor, Sony, Vivo and ZTE, among other. Curiously, the chipmaker has omitted Samsung among the brands that will adopt the new chip. However, it is logical to think that the South Koreans will implement it in the Galaxy S24.