Qualcomm has just revealed the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5, the appropriately named second member of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 line. It follows the Gen 5 Elite, which was.
The standard Gen 5 is still a powerful mobile system-on-a-chip (SoC) with a maximum clock speed of 3.8GHz. This is a little lower than the Elite’s top speed of 4.6 GHz, but still nothing to be alarmed about. It includes a custom-built Orion CPU and has speed-boosting features like matrix acceleration. The company says the platform offers a 36 percent performance improvement compared to the Snapdragon 7, as well as a 76 percent increase in web browsing responsiveness.
The SoC also features a Qualcomm Adreno GPU, like the Elite, which “unlocks higher clock speeds and increases gaming and graphics performance by up to 11 percent.” This is a chip built for modern smartphones, so it’s also designed for AI. It features the company’s proprietary Sensing Hub technology that combines microphone and sensor inputs to detect the user’s speaking intent.
It is capable of on-device AI processing thanks to the Qualcomm Hexagon NPU. The company says it will “enable agent AI assistants to deliver context-aware interactions and personalized suggestions.” This is the corporate meaning of “it does something and says something.”
Qualcomm
Qualcomm says these chips will start appearing in mobile devices in the “coming weeks.” The company named OnePlus as a partner and that outfit did just that, suspiciously devoid of any actual specifications.
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