Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 unveiled: sooner, extra environment friendly, with ray tracing and Wi-Fi 7

Right now the Qualcomm staff unveiled its new flagship – the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset. Efficiency has been improved on all fronts in comparison with the Gen 1 mannequin – efficiency that we are going to quickly expertise as the primary units primarily based on the Gen 2 are simply across the nook.

This chip is formally often known as the SM8550-AB and is fabbed on a 4nm node. Listed here are extra particulars about its parts.

CPU and GPU

Qualcomm has targeted on enhancing energy effectivity, however the brand new chip nonetheless brings considerable speed-ups. The brand new Kryo CPU trio delivers as much as 35% larger efficiency with as much as 40% larger effectivity.

The clock speeds are the identical as on the 8+ Gen 1, however the core composition will not be. The only Kryo Prime core (primarily based on Cortex-X3) runs at 3.2GHz (3.1872GHz to be precise) to ship excessive single-threaded efficiency. This time round, nonetheless, it’s backed by 4 Efficiency cores (as a substitute of three) to higher deal with multi-threaded workloads – these cores run at 2.8GHz. Lastly, there are three (not 4) Effectivity cores at 2.0GHz.

The Gen 2 brings assist for brand spanking new, sooner reminiscence applied sciences. For RAM it really works with LP-DDR5X at as much as 4,200MHz (up from LP-DDR5 at 3,200MHz). For storage it could possibly use the brand new UFS 4.0 format (up from UFS 3.1).

The newest Adreno GPU guarantees as much as 25% larger efficiency with as much as 45% larger energy effectivity. It additionally brings assist for {hardware} accelerated ray tracing to the Snapdragon platform. Now that ray tracing {hardware} is on the market from the foremost chipset distributors for Android, we may even see cell recreation builders embrace the brand new tech like they did on PC and console. Additionally, this GPU is the primary to assist Vulkan 1.3 (together with OpenGL ES 3.2).

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 can drive on-device shows with QHD+ decision at as much as 144Hz or 4K ones at as much as 60Hz. It additionally helps exterior shows as much as 4K at 60Hz (with 10-bit Rec. 2020 coloration gamut, HDR10+ and Dolby Imaginative and prescient as well). Qualcomm additionally lastly enabled AV1 video decoding – streams as much as 8K at 60fps (with HDR) are supported.

Cameras

Qualcomm boasts that Sony sensors with Digital Overlap HDR (DOL-HDR) and Samsung’s 200MP HP3 have been optimized to work with the Snapdragon ISP. Like its predecessor, the Gen 2 brings a triple 18-bit ISP that may deal with as much as three 36MP cameras (30fps) concurrently or go as much as 200PM for a single digicam. 108MP sensors are supported with zero shutter lag.

For video, the chipset can file 8K HDR footage at 30fps (and seize 64MP pictures concurrently), 4K at 120fps and do slow-motion movies too (720p at 960fps). It helps a number of HDR codecs together with HDR10+, HLG and Dolby Imaginative and prescient. Utilizing DOL sensors, it could possibly seize as much as 4 exposures for every body of video.

Connectivity

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 upgrades to the brand new Snapdragon X70 modem. It helps each mmWave and sub-6GHz 5G, in fact. Its peak downlink speeds are 10Gbps, peak uplink is 3.5Gbps (just like its predecessor).

This modem helps Twin-SIM, Twin-Energetic (DSDA) operation the place two 5G SIMs (or 5G+4G) are lively on the identical time.

Native connectivity brings options the upcoming Wi-Fi 7 commonplace (802.11be), because of the brand new FastConnect 78000 system. It tops out at 5.8Gbps (up from 3.6Gbps on the earlier chip). In addition to velocity, the brand new commonplace additionally lowers latency (Qualcomm calls it “wire-like”).

Snapdragon 8 Gen 2’s FastConnect 7800 system brings Wi-Fi 7 and low-latency Bluetooth

As earlier than, the FastConnect system has Bluetooth 5.3 connectivity. With the newest Snapdragon Sound system it could possibly ship 48kHz lossless music streaming in addition to the lowest-ever 48ms latency for gaming.

There isn’t a lot to report on for wired connectivity – the chip does USB 3.1 with Fast Cost 5 (which is only a wrapper across the USB Energy Supply commonplace).

AI

The brand new Hexagon processor introduces assist for a brand new INT4 format for the primary time on a cell Qualcomm chip. It guarantees 60% higher efficiency per Watt than earlier methods.

The Hexagon is quicker basically too – Qualcomm claims that AI efficiency has been elevated 4.35x. That energy will be roped into serving to the digicam by recognizing which elements of the picture are a face, hair, garments, background and so forth and making use of processing in another way to them.

Coming quickly

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 will probably be adopted by main Android makers, Qualcomm lists the next in its press launch: Asus ROG, Honor, iQOO, Motorola, nubia, OnePlus, Oppo, Purple Magic, Sharp, Sony, vivo, Xiaomi, Meizu and ZTE.

It goes on to say that the primary telephones primarily based on the Gen 2 will probably be obtainable earlier than the top of this yr, however doesn’t say which makers will probably be first. There isn’t any point out of Samsung and the upcoming S23 collection.