Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 to feature Cortex-X3 prime core

The specifications were shared by a reliable source

Last month, Qualcomm unveiled the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset that will power most of the Android flagships in the second half of 2022. This is an upgrade over the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, which powers a lot of Android flagships this year. Well, while we are still waiting for the first phone powered by the new Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 to launch, we now got to know some specifications of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. Yes, you read that right! We got the specifications of Qualcomm’s next year’s flagship SOC, and these specifications were shared by Digital Chat Station, a very trusted source on Weibo.

As per DCS, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 will have an uncommon 1 + 2 + 2 + 3 CPU core arrangement. It is worth mentioning that all the flagships from Qualcomm in recent years have featured the 1 + 3 + 4 CPU configuration. Anyways, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 has a prime Cortex-X3 core which should offer a significant performance boost over the Cortex-X2 that is there in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 & 8+ Gen 1. Then there are two Cortex-A720 cores, two Cortex-A710 cores, and finally three Cortex-A510 cores.

DCS also revealed that the codenames for Cortex-X3 & Cortex-A720 are ‘Makalu-Elp’ and ‘Makalu.’ We know that Cortex-A710 & Cortex-A510 are codenamed ‘Matterhorn’ and ‘Klein-R1’.

The above graph was shared by ARM in 2020 when it announced its plans. The ‘Matterhorn Generation’ refers to the Cortex-X2/A710 cores, and the ‘Makalu Generation’ refers to the upcoming Cortex-X3/A720 cores. So, as per this graph, we can expect up to a 30% performance boost over the Cortex-X1/A78, which were there in the Snapdragon 888. Based on this, expect a 10-15% performance boost over the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 & 8+ Gen 1.

The GPU will be the Adreno 740, and the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 will be based on the TSMC’s 4nm process, similar to the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1.

Well, with all these performance upgrades, we also hope the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is much better than Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 in terms of thermals. As always, Qualcomm will announce this SOC in December at the Qualcomm Tech Summit.