The Snapdragon 8 Elite Mobile Platform features custom-designed cores in the CPU, GPU, and NPU to dramatically improve speed, efficiency, and AI for next-generation flagship smartphones.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite is such a big step up in performance that Qualcomm decided the system-on-a-chip needed a new name. Rather than give it the obvious Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 moniker, Qualcomm elevated the chip to elite status.
What makes the Snapdragon 8 Elite a powerhouse isn’t the name, however; It’s the custom cores. Qualcomm dumped the ARM Cortex designs it has relied on for past processors in favor of using its own. By designing its own silicon, much like a certain fruit-branded company has, Qualcomm was able to realize bigger-than-normal leaps in raw power when compared with the popular Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. Phones with the Snapdragon 8 Elite inside are going to be seriously fast, much more efficient, and better than ever at AI. Oryon and Adreno: Mega Power
Now in its second generation, Qualcomm’s Oryon CPU is the raw engine of the 8 Elite. It moves from the 4nm process of the 8 Gen 3 to TSMC’s second-generation 3nm process with a 4.32GHz prime core and 3.53GHz performance cores, all using a 64-bit architecture. This arrangement generates a 45% jump in CPU speed and a matching 45% improvement in power efficiency. It supports up to dual-channel LPDDR5x memory at up to 5.3Gbps in densities up to 24GB for fast data retrieval. Qualcomm claims Oryon delivers a 27% overall improvement in power savings, which means up to 2.5 more hours of mobile game time.
The Oryon CPU works tightly with the new Adreno GPU, which has a sliced architecture. Each slice has its own dedicated memory, which means smoother performance, longer battery life, cleaner graphics, and more realistic 3D environments. Qualcomm says the GPU supports the Unreal Engine 5.3 and Unreal Chaos Physics Engine, HDR gaming (10-bit color and Rec.2020), OpenGL ES 3.2 and Vulkan 1.3, and hardware-accelerated H.265, VP9, and AV1 decoding. The result is a huge 40% jump in speed and a corresponding 40% jump in efficiency compared with the 8 Gen 3. Typical year-over-year gains for CPU and GPU performance often fall in the 15-25% range. Hexagon and Spectra: Embedded AI
If Oryon and Adreno form the heart of the Snapdragon 8 Elite, the Hexagon NPU is its brain. The revised version of Hexagon has a fused AI accelerator architecture with scalar, vector, and tensor accelerators. These are aided by micro tile inferencing, large shared memory, and an upgraded power delivery system with support for INT4, INT8, INT16, and FP16 precisions.
