On October 22, 2024, Qualcomm unveiled its new flagship mobile platform, the Snapdragon 8 Ultimate, at the Snapdragon Tech Summit. This chip is manufactured using TSMC's second-generation 3nm process and features Qualcomm's proprietary Oryon CPU architecture, achieving a dual enhancement in performance and energy efficiency.
The Snapdragon 8 Ultimate marks Qualcomm's first mobile platform to adopt a full large-core design, abandoning the previous hybrid big.LITTLE design approach. Its CPU consists of two super cores clocked at up to 4.32GHz and six performance cores at 3.53GHz, setting a new record for smartphone processor frequencies. Compared to its predecessor, the Snapdragon 8Gen3, the CPU performance of the Snapdragon 8 Ultimate can be up to 50% higher, with energy efficiency improved by up to 45%.
In terms of GPU, the Snapdragon 8 Ultimate introduces a new tile design, dividing the GPU into three groups, all clocked at 1.1GHz. This design enables better task distribution and concurrent performance, thereby enhancing performance and reducing power consumption. Compared to the previous generation, the GPU performance of the Snapdragon 8 Ultimate is improved by 40%, with power consumption reduced by 40%, and ray tracing performance increased by 35%.
For AI, the Snapdragon 8 Ultimate has undergone a comprehensive upgrade to Qualcomm's AI engine, including modules like the CPU, GPU, and NPU. The Hexagon NPU sees a 45% improvement in both performance and energy efficiency, with the sensor hub's AI performance increased by 60% and AI inference speed up by 45%. The Snapdragon 8 Ultimate also supports running personalized, multimodal AI assistants offline at the device side for the first time, making voice interactions more responsive with virtually no delay.
In imaging, the Snapdragon 8 Ultimate introduces a new AI ISP, deeply integrated with the Hexagon NPU, capable of processing AI features directly at the device side. The NPU can now access raw RAW sensor data on the ISP for the first time, enabling real-time AI-assisted enhancements for 4K60fps video shooting. Additionally, the Snapdragon 8 Ultimate supports AI imaging features such as infinite semantic segmentation, real-time AI fill light, and video magic erasure.
In connectivity, the Snapdragon 8 Ultimate is the world's first mobile platform to support AI-enhanced 5G and Wi-Fi connectivity, integrating the Snapdragon X80 5G modem and RF system. The Snapdragon 80 modem achieves several industry firsts, including the first to support downlink 6-carrier aggregation, the first with 6 Rx receiver paths, and the first to support AI/5G-A fusion. Furthermore, the Snapdragon 8 Ultimate supports AI-enhanced Wi-Fi 7, claiming peak speeds 2.4 times that of competitors.
Qualcomm states that ASUS, Honor, iQOO, Motorola, Nubia, OnePlus, OPPO, Red Magic, Redmi, realme, Samsung, vivo, Xiaomi, ZTE, and other terminal manufacturers will soon launch new devices based on the Snapdragon 8 Ultimate.
