As expected, Qualcomm made the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 official this week at its annual conference in Hawaii, and no, I’m not there and I’m mad about it. Qualcomm is hyping this chip to be an AI powerhouse, with devices expected to ship with this silicon inside within the next few weeks.
For what’s new, Qualcomm highlights its generative AI capabilities, citing its ability to run up to 10 billion parameters on device, as well as the generation of 20 tokens per second for 7B LLMs (large language models). Another AI-related note is the inclusion of Truepic photo capture support that lets you snap a photo with Truepic’s cryptographic seal to prove the photo is real and not generative AI. That’s super neat and sounds pretty important these days.
As for raw specs and performance, you better believe this processor has the numbers. According to Qualcomm, Gen 3 features a Kryon CPU with 30% increased performance and 20% better power efficiency, 25% better GPU performance with 40% better Ray Tracing, as well as 10% overall power savings.
How about we just name off some sweet Qualcomm-provided bullet points for this thing.
- Supports 24-bit 96 kHz lossless music over Bluetooth wireless technology
- World’s first 5G modem with integrated AI tensor hardware accelerator for better speeds, coverage, mobility, link robustness, and location accuracy
- Up to 98% faster Qualcomm Hexagon NPU performance and up to 40% performance/watt
- Maximize mobile gaming performance by upscaling game scenes up to 8K external displays with Snapdragon Game Super Resolution
- Only WiFi system supporting High Band Simultaneous Multi-Link for blazing fast, low-latency performance
- Two always-sensing cameras in the front and back allow for easy QR code scanning, face unlock, and more
- Video Object Eraser by Arcsoft for video capture removes unwanted people and objects at the tap of a finger
For a complete spec rundown and feature support writeup, have a look at Qualcomm’s material. There’s seriously too much stuff to list here. And again, expect select overseas devices from makers like ZTE, OPPO, and ASUS to have this chip in the coming weeks. For us in the US, it’s assumed the Galaxy S24 lineup from Samsung will feature this silicon with its special ‘for Galaxy’ tweaks.
Coming soon.