Eight CPU cores are divided into three clusters in a “1 + 5 + 2” configuration
Qualcomm has officially unveiled the flagship SoC Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. This platform will be used in Xiaomi 14 and Xiaomi 14 Pro, IQOO 12, Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, Honor Magic6 Pro, and many other flagships in 2024.
The SoC is divided into three clusters in a “1 + 5 + 2” configuration. One core is a powerful Arm Cortex-X4 operating at 3.3 GHz. Five cores are Arm Cortex-A720, three of them operate at 3.2 GHz, the other two at 3 GHz. Finally, the remaining cores are the power-efficient Cortex-A520 clocked at 2.3 GHz. Compared to Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, the cache memory has increased from 8 to 12 MB.
Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 presented, the first smartphone based on it is Xiaomi 14
The platform supports LPDDR5X RAM with a capacity of up to 24 GB and a frequency of up to 4800 MHz, and the Adreno 750 GPU included in the SoC supports real-time ray tracing. The platform also includes Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 adapters, and a 5G Snapdragon X75 modem.
Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 supports screens with resolutions up to 8K (!) and frame rates up to 240 Hz. But this is when displaying images to external sources. As for the integrated screens, QHD+ displays with a frame rate of 144 Hz are supported. The platform is compatible with a wide variety of camera sensors (up to 200 megapixels) in a wide variety of configurations.
According to official data, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 CPU is 30% more powerful than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 CPU but consumes 20% less power. The Adreno 750 GPU is 25% more powerful than the Adreno 740, and its consumption is 25% less. But the biggest gain was the Neural Processing Unit (NPU) to speed up AI tasks: performance increased by 98%. This gives reason to think that in terms of NPU, Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 will be able to outperform Google Tensor G3, which focuses on AI acceleration.
Qualcomm said that the first smartphones with Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 will be released in the coming weeks. These will be models from brands such as Asus, Honor, iQOO, Meizu, Nio, Nubia, OnePlus Oppo, Realme, RedMagic, Sony, Vivo, Xiaomi, and ZTE. Interestingly, Samsung is not on the list, although Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 will be used in all three models of the new Galaxy S24 line. Samsung is probably not mentioned because the Galaxy S24 will be released later than the others: the premiere is expected in January 2024.
Well, the first flagships on Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 will be Xiaomi 14 and Xiaomi 14 Pro. Xiaomi Group President William Lu, aka Liu Weibing, announced this at the Qualcomm event. During his speech, he held a Xiaomi 14 in his hands.
