Qualcomm announces Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 SoC with faster graphics & AI performance

Qualcomm has officially announced the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 SoC at the Snapdragon Tech Summit, as the new 5G chipset aimed at next-gen flagship Android phones. This chipset is the first under Qualcomm’s new branding scheme, as they drop the Snapdragon 800 series moniker after many years.

Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 specs

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 is based on the 4nm process node, over the 5nm process node of the preceding Snapdragon 888. Qualcomm has not yet revealed the exact names of the Kryo CPU cores or Adreno GPU that it will be utilising in the new chipset.

However, it did mention that the CPU has Arm Cortex-X2 cores clocked at up to 2Ghz. The CPU has 20% faster performance and 30% better power efficiency over the Snapdragon 888. The Adreno GPU will deliver 30% better graphics rendering and 25% improvement in power efficiency.

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For better AI processing, Qualcomm has included the 7th Gen Qualcomm AI Engine, equipped with the Qualcomm Hexagon processor, featuring a 2x faster tensor accelerator and 2x larger shared memory than its predecessor.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 also includes better security with the dedicated Trust Management Engine, which provides root of trust for apps and services installed on the system.

Qualcomm has integrated the Snapdragon X65 5G Modem-RF System with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, that can reach up to 10 Gigabit download speeds.

Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 availability

According to Qualcomm, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 will be used by major smartphone manufacturers like Black Shark, Honor, iQoo, Motorola, Nubia, OnePlus, Oppo, Realme, Redmi, Sharp, Sony, Vivo, Xiaomi, and ZTE. Phones with the new flagship chipset could launch by the end of 2021.