Before the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 is officially unveiled, we have compiled all the relevant details surrounding Qualcomm’s flagship smartphone SoC
Qualcomm will be shifting away from the traditional ARM CPU designs later this year when it announces the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 in the fourth quarter. There is immense significance surrounding this smartphone chipset for two primary reasons. One is that it will be the first silicon to adopt the company’s custom Oryon cores that Qualcomm announced back in 2022, and these designs would not have been possible without the Nuvia acquisition.
Second, it is the San Diego firm’s first silicon that will reportedly leverage the advanced 3nm process. Here, we discuss all the possible changes arriving to the chipset, its alleged specifications, and its leaked performance capabilities to give you a glimpse of what to expect in the coming months. Here is everything you need to know about the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4.Switching to TSMC’s second-generation 3nm process will give the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 a new layer of power efficiency
Last year, only Apple introduced a family of 3nm chipsets by using TSMC’s cutting-edge 3nm ‘N3B’ node. Unfortunately, due to cost restraints, companies such as Qualcomm and MediaTek would have to wait another year to switch to the ‘N3E’ process, which is another variant of the earlier 3nm iteration. However, it is not like the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and Dimensity 9300 were any less capable simply because they were fabricated on TSMC’s N4P architecture.
In fact, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3’s CPU and GPU improvements are what excites us about the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 even more, and transitioning to TSMC’s second-generation 3nm process should give Qualcomm sufficient headroom to deliver the same performance while consuming less power. At the same time, we could see the chipset maker raise those power limits to gain an edge in multi-core performance, but not to the point where the company experiences diminishing returns.
Then again, an improved manufacturing process is not the only deciding factor of a smartphone chipset’s performance and power consumption metrics, as the custom CPU designs are also responsible for determining those figures.
