As the dark of night rolls into China tonight, Qualcomm is hosting a mobile-focused product launch event they’re calling “Snapdragon Night.” Headlining the event is the announcement of the company’s new flagship SoC, the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1. A mid-generation update to their flagship smartphone SoC, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, the 8+ Gen 1 follows Qualcomm’s annual tradition of releasing a refresh product to improve performance and give partners something new to work with for the second half of the year. And for this year in particular, we’re looking at a very notable change in Qualcomm’s chips.
Unlike previous generations where Qualcomm just launched a faster bin of their existing silicon, for 2022 we have something more substantial to talk about. Qualcomm has completely switched the foundries – from Samsung to TSMC – and as a result a new mold is rolling out. Thanks to this, the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 Qualcomm is reaping something of a one-time production gain, allowing them to boost both CPU and GPU performance while reducing power consumption.
| Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Flagship SoCs | |||
| SoC | Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 | Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 | |
| Processor | 1x Cortex-X2 † 3.2GHz 3x Cortex-A710 4x Cortex-A510 6MB sL3 | 1x Cortex-X2 @ 3.0GHz 3x Cortex-A710 4x Cortex-A510 6MB sL3 | |
| GPU | Adreno †10% higher clock speed† | Adreno | |
| DSP / NPU | Hexagon | Hexagon | |
| Memory controller | 4x 16-bit CH @ 3200MHz LPDDR5 / 51.2GB/s 4 MB system-level cache | ||
| ISP/Camera | Triple 18-bit Spectra ISP 1x 200MP or 108MP with ZSL 8K HDR video and 64MP burst recording | ||
| encoding/ Decode | 8K30 / 4K120 10-bit H.265 Dolby Vision, HDR10+, HDR10, HLG 720p960 infinite recording | ||
| Integrated modem | X65 integrated (5G NR Sub-6 + mmWave) | ||
| mfc. Process | TSMC 4nm | Samsung 4nm | |
The new Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 quickly dives into the specs and is essentially the original Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 ported from Samsung’s 4nm line to one of TSMC’s 4nm line. Under more normal circumstances, this kind of shift would probably be inconspicuous — or at most a funny exercise in edge-case search — but for Qualcomm’s flagship SoC, the case matters more.
While official sources and statements about the quality of Samsung’s 4nm process are rare, it has become unofficially clear that Samsung’s 4nm process has not lived up to expectations. This has caused a cascading impact on the chips created on the process node, leading to the original Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 developing an affinity for power consumption, and Samsung’s own Exynos 2200 doing no better. Conversely, TSMC’s N4 process looks great in every way, with the optically shrunken node building on TSMC’s already successful and high-performance 5nm technologies.
As a result of this performance gap between Samsung and TSMC’s 4nm nodes, Qualcomm is taking the unusual step of (essentially) handing over their high-end SoC to TSMC’s fab. Which, while not strictly necessary – Qualcomm has great momentum and the 8 Gen 1 has sold well – is certainly a wise move for the company. Qualcomm faces particularly stiff competition this generation from MediaTek, whose flagship Dimensity 9000 SoC was the main product for TSMC’s 4nm node. And that gives MediaTek a distinct advantage over the original 8 Gen 1, one that Qualcomm would be happy to nullify.
Ultimately, the switch in fabs gives Qualcomm a chance to improve on the original 8 Gen 1 at both ends of the spectrum, resulting in the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1. In terms of performance, TSMC’s node gives them an easy opportunity to Boost CPU and GPU clock speeds for more performance. The premium Cortex-X2 core is now clocked 7% higher, at 3.2 GHz, and meanwhile, the A710 and A510 clusters have even increased their clock speeds significantly, by about 12% each. Now even the slowest A510 cores can run at 2GHz. GPU clock speeds have also been similarly increased, and while Qualcomm isn’t disclosing any specific clock speeds there, they’ve confirmed that the 8+ Gen 1’s Adreno GPU block is clocked 10% higher than the original 8 Gen 1.
But most of Qualcomm’s profits from switching production nodes is invested in reducing power consumption. Something of a sore point with the 8 Gen 1, TSMC’s better 4nm process means Qualcomm sees much lower power consumption across their SoC at iso frequency.
Officially, Qualcomm claims a 30% improvement in both GPU and CPU efficiency. Although, as mentioned before, this is on iso-frequency and doesn’t account for the higher peak clock speeds of the 8+ Gen 1. Consequently, the real world energy savings won’t be as great on a peak-to-peak basis, but according to Qualcomm, the energy savings are still significant. Overall, the company is calling for a 15% reduction in SoC power consumption under “practical usage patterns” over the original 8 Gen 1, which in turn should lead to longer battery life in handsets that use the new. using SoC.
Beyond that, the official specs for the 8+ Gen 1 don’t reflect material changes to the SoC’s configuration from the original chip. So we’re still looking at the same integrated X65 5G modem, the same Spectra ISP, and the same video encode/decode blocks (sorry, gang, still no AV1 support!). So despite the fact that a new mold has been fitted this year for their mid-generation refresh product, there are no new features to speak of with the 8+ Gen 1.
As for the SoC performance, Qualcomm is officially claiming a 10% improved GPU and CPU performance, thanks to the aforementioned clock speed increases. While we weren’t able to attend a benchmarking session Qualcomm held last week, the performance mode numbers released by the company are roughly in line with these claims. Qualcomm’s Geekbench 5 results are a few percent higher than what we benchmarked in December at the 8 Gen 1 launch event, although it’s notable that they didn’t score significantly higher in PCMark. GPU performance figures are similarly mixed, with some of Qualcomm’s official results coming very close to our original 8 Gen 1 results, but I’m hesitant to read too much into it as a difference between peak and sustained testing in GPU results. As always, the final word will have to come down to independent third-party testing, although on the face of it nothing Qualcomm claims is unreasonable given the improvements in clock speed and thermal headroom gained from the move to TSMC.
Finally, as far as consumers are concerned, they could get their first look at Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 devices in the third quarter of this year. According to Qualcomm, many of the usual suspects have signed up to release phones based on the new SoC, including Asus, Motorola, OnePlus, Honor and Xiaomi.
#Qualcomm #Announces #Snapdragon #Gen #Switch #TSMC #Speed #Power
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