The flagship Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 mobile chip has been unveiled
Chip maker Qualcomm took the chance to announce the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 during the first day of Snapdragon Summit 2022 on Tuesday. At the show, Qualcomm’s latest silicon was on display, along with the improvements its technologies are bringing to the next gen of gadgets.
The underlying CPU architecture, which is a “prime” core supported by four performance cores and three efficiency cores, may not appear to be a significant improvement over the Gen 1 but the newest mobile system on a chip (SoC) from Qualcomm has undergone a variety of modifications that improve important facets of the mobile computing experience, including AI and image processing, power efficiency, and connectivity.
Hexagon Direct Link, a link between the Hexagon processor and the other AI processing cores for quick, real-time processing, is a new feature of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. The image signal processor (ISP) in the 8 Gen 2 will be able to perform cognitive processing for the first time as a result, so the company claims.
Additionally, Qualcomm doubled the amount of real-time sensor processing by adding a second AI processor to the sensor hub. Camera processing in sleep mode is made possible by the additional sensor processing through apps. This enables activity detection or the ability to scan QR codes when in sleep mode. When active, the phone is able to use real-time sensing to monitor the user(s) to unlock the phone as well as enable privacy features for unauthorized users.
Another feature revealed at Snapdragon Summit 2022 for the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is dedicated AI processing in the modem. This function enhances throughput, coverage, and range. In addition, the modem has simultaneous dual-SIM support and 4x carrier aggregation for up to 10Gbps while maintaining backward compatibility with 4G.
Qualcomm also improved the Adreno GPU to include ray tracing without consuming much power. Other improvements include dual Bluetooth channels, Wi-Fi 7 support with up to 5.8Gbps and 2ns of latency, and the use of a new 3.2GHz Arm Cortex X3 high-performance core for a 35% performance increase and a 40% performance efficiency increase.
Smartphones running on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset are likely to become available to consumers as early as next month, but most devices using the chip won’t be available until the first half of the next year.