The new Snapdragon 8 Elite, the best processor for Android phones, has the power of a laptop

In the Hawaiian paradise of Maui, Qualcomm is no slouch this year at its most important event on the calendar, where it unveils the next steps for its processors to the world. Company with a high market share in Spain thanks to smartphonesshowed a new generation of its most powerful chip: Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite.

The approach of this new platform meant a very important change in the internal processor architecturelargely thanks to the integration of the second generation Oryon, which we were able to see firsthand in EL ESPAÑOL – Omicrono. This processor, in its first release, was introduced just a year ago and marked all in Californian company in the segment of computers running Windows 11.

As a result of this launch, some technology companies such as Microsoft, Asus or Acer presented their first products – mainly laptops and convertibles – with high dose games and artificial intelligence inside the devices themselves.

Now, with the release of the second generation of Oryon processors, Qualcomm aims to revolutionize the gaming world. smartphonesaiming for maximum range. “We are pleased to present Qualcomm Oryon capabilities on our mobile platforms Snapdragon,” Chris Patrick, senior vice president and general manager of mobile devices at Qualcomm, said on stage.

“We launched it on PC earlier this year, delivering an incredible experience and unprecedented battery life computer users, which has energized the industry and captured the attention of consumers,” Patrick continued in his speech.

Productivity galore

Even though the Snapdragon 8 Elite is based on last year’s laptop processor, Qualcomm insists that it has developed an entirely new microarchitecture for the Snapdragon 8 Elite, which includes the second generation of Oryon processors. The combination of these two factors makes the processor 46% more efficient Compared to previous designs, the power has been increased and some important features have been added.

In this edition, the CPU eliminates the so-called “efficient” cores, which have been gradually withdrawn in recent years. The interior layout is now divided into two types kernels: Prime and performance; who will be responsible for performing a significant part of the tasks in smartphones.

Qualcomm uses 2 Prime cores with a frequency of 4.32 GHz, which They will work on the most complex and difficult tasks which require a high dose of raw energy. They include new Instant Wake technology, which allows the next task in the queue to be completed “immediately” by adding new ones hardware And software.

The remaining 6 cores included in the Snapdragon 8 Elite operate at 3.53 GHz and, as explained, They represent a balance between power and efficiency. Therefore, the company decided to eliminate the cores, which until the last generation were intended to perform lighter tasks inside devices.

The new processor also includes new cache memory in the cores and provides greater bandwidth when coupled with RAM. With all this heavy artillery on the table, Qualcomm then focused on gamesone of the most demanding sectors that requires new developments and improvements every year.

As stated, Snapdragon 8 Elite reaches Increase efficiency in video games by 40% thanks to the Adreno GPU. According to Qualcomm during the presentation, when combined with the Oryon processor, this can be improved by up to 50%.

Some of the most important new features unveiled at the Maui event include compatibility with graphics engines Chaos Physics Unreal Engine and Unreal Engine 5. The latter allows for a noticeable increase in the geometric complexity of textures and, as they said, provides “cinematic quality video game rendering.” Added to this is the improvement of ray tracing technology, which is responsible for improving lighting in compatible games.

AI Applications

Qualcomm has doubled down on its commitment to AI-powered features in the Snapdragon 8 Elite. The company has been working on its Hexagon Neural Processing Unit (NPU) for generations, which now includes multimodal generative capabilities within the device itselfsomething they’ve already demonstrated with laptops unveiled in recent months.

In previous processors, instructions, commands and tips what the user said out loud had to be converted into text for the AI ​​to understand. A additional work that interfered with gaining experience user due to a time delay in response and, sometimes, loss of information during decryption.

Multimodal AI now understands the user’s voice commands and provides faster but more accurate results. You can now also receive data directly from other types of sources, such as audio, sounds, photos, videos, live images captured with your phone camera, or text; And process them on your device without the need for an Internet connection. Until now, embedded AI could only use text, voice, and images.

performance improvement is 45% per wattas they commented during the presentation. “With advanced CPU, GPU and NPU capabilities, Snapdragon 8 Elite delivers significant improvements in performance and power efficiency,” said Chris Patrick.

“In addition, it revolutionizes the mobile experience by offering personalized multimodal generative artificial intelligence directly on the device, allowing you to understand speech, context and images to improve everything,” he explains. “From productivity to creative tasks, while prioritizing user privacy.”

Camera improvements

The photo and video section also played a very representative role during the presentation of the new Snapdragon 8 Elite. Developments in this segment are closely related to artificial intelligence, Hexagon NPU and their combination with cameras.

The processor, thanks to the triple AI ISP, is now capable work with 3 cameras of 48 megapixels and at the same time 30 frames per second. Thanks to this and artificial intelligence, Snapdragon can now apply advanced image enhancement algorithms that until now could only be done when connected to the Internet or by uploading media content to the cloud. A process that other processors, such as Google Tensors, perform using the Internet.

One of the new products that combines cameras and artificial intelligence is Insight AI. It uses Hexagon NPU to segment the captured image into layers – it can exceed 250 units – and recognize lighting conditions to improve results the final result obtained by the user, both in photos and videos.

Similarly, Qualcomm introduced Real-time relighting function. Thanks to this application, the user will be able to select the light source during a video call, which is especially useful for illuminating the face in low light conditions. For example, you can adjust where the photo is and adjust its intensity, or let the AI ​​do it automatically.

The last of the presented characteristics is video object eraser. This is one of the most commonly used features to eliminate elements that interfere with photos, such as objects or people that the user does not want to see. Doing this in video format is a really difficult task, since it requires eliminating the attacker frame by frame.

In Snapdragon 8 Elite, artificial intelligence will be responsible for removing unwanted objects from videos. fully automatic thanks to algorithms. Moreover, to ensure privacy and security, this process is performed entirely on the device itself, powered by the new Qualcomm processor.