Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 mobile platform is officially released with huge NPU improvements

On October 25th, during the Snapdragon Summit held in Hawaii, Qualcomm officially unveiled the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 mobile platform, boasting a 30% CPU performance enhancement, a 25% GPU performance increment, and a staggering 98% surge in NPU capabilities when compared to its predecessor.

This sophisticated SoC is crafted using TSMC’s N4P process technology. The CPU incorporates an avant-garde 1+5+2 architecture, specifically consisting of a Cortex-X4 primary processor core clocked at 3.3GHz, five A720 performance cores at 3.2GHz, and two energy-efficient A520 cores at 2.3GHz. Theoretically, when juxtaposed with its forerunner, the CPU’s prowess has been amplified by 20%, while power consumption has been curtailed by 20%.

As for the GPU, it adopts the Adreno 750 architecture. Its paramount features encompass hardware ray tracing, a gaming frame rate of 240 FPS, a standby frame rate of 1Hz, as well as support for Unreal Engine 5. The GPU, in theory, bolsters its performance by 25% over the previous iteration, while reducing energy expenditure by 20%.

Furthermore, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 mobile platform not only integrates a series of low-power sensors that outperform their predecessors by 3.5 times, but it also witnesses an exponential surge in AI data processing. The NPU’s performance has skyrocketed by 98%, and power consumption has diminished by 40%. This platform facilitates the operation of generative AI models on devices equipped with this SoC. At launch, over 20 such AI models are affirmed to be supported. In the realm of AI photography, capabilities like object removal, background creation, real-time HDR photography, and a Vlogger mode using both front and rear cameras concurrently are anticipated.

In the domain of communication basebands, this mobile platform is embedded with Qualcomm’s latest X75 5G modem, offering peak download velocities of up to 10Gbps and upload speeds that can touch 3.5Gbps.

Currently, it is confirmed that behemoths like Samsung, Sony, Xiaomi, iQoo, Meizu, Nubia, OPPO, OnePlus, and others plan to harness this SoC in their forthcoming flagship smartphones. Barring unforeseen circumstances, the third-generation Snapdragon 8 mobile platform is poised to be the quintessential processor for Android flagships in 2024.