Qualcomm unveiled an all-new SoC (system on a chip) this week, dubbed the Snapdragon 8 Elite. Based on the Arm architecture, it is primarily intended for high-end smartphones. According to the manufacturer, it will be the world's fastest mobile processor.
Announced this week during Snapdragon SummitThe Snapdragon 8 Elite promises great smartphone performance AndroidAndroid. It contains a second generation Orion processor (the first generation is the one used in… SOCSOC Snapdragon X Plus and Elite for laptops), Adreno graphics chip and Hexagon AI accelerator (NPU). It is therefore designed to implement all the AI functions that smartphone manufacturers have begun to integrate into their devices.
The maximum SoC frequency reaches 4.32 GHz on two main cores, and 3.53 GHz on the six performance cores. Compared to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, Qualcomm claims a 45% performance improvement on single-core or multi-core, and up to 62% for web browsing. On the graphics side, you can count on 40% more performance, and 35% more ray tracing performance.
It has hardly been announced that the Snapdragon X Elite may be in danger of losing its license to Arm
But the Oryon technology used in this new processor comes from the acquisition of Nuvia in 2021. According to Arm, Qualcomm should have renegotiated its license, but it did not. Therefore, Arm filed a lawsuit against Qualcomm. The trial is scheduled to begin in December, but Arm has just issued an ultimatum. If Qualcomm does not address the situation within 60 days, Arm will withdraw its license. A deadline that expires a few days after the start of the trial.
Qualcomm is the world's largest producer of smartphone processors, almost all of which are based on smartphone processorsArm geometryArm geometry. Qualcomm can still produce chips based on Arm's plans, but it will no longer have the right to produce chips that the company designed but still use Arm's architecture. This dispute will likely lead to shortages in mobile processor inventory, limiting innovation and increasing the cost of smartphones, as well as any device that uses a Qualcomm processor, such as Meta Quest headsets or some Copilot+ PCs.
