The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 brings Wi-Fi 7, with 32-bit support
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 brings Wi-Fi 7, with 32-bit support
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Qualcomm
Today, Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC, the company's flagship chip coming to many Android phones over the next few months. Along with the usual newer, better, and hopefully faster cores, a big new feature is the addition of Wi-Fi 7 support so you can enjoy better home wireless, provided to invest in a new router.
Qualcomm has claims for this new chip. The company claims the processor "improves performance by up to 35%" and has "up to 40% more power efficiency." The GPU is said to "deliver up to 25% faster performance, with up to 45% better power efficiency". Take both of these claims with a grain of salt, as Qualcomm last year promised a 20% CPU upgrade that never showed up in product shipments. Even if Qualcomm lives up to those performance promises, it would still be about a year behind the iPhone. The company is trying to remedy its uncompetitive performance with the (now legally encumbered) acquisition of Nuvia, but those chips aren't ready yet.
Let's start with the basics. It's a 4nm chip with an unusual layout containing four different CPU cores, all designed by Arm. The main core is a 3.2GHz Arm Cortex X3 - all good and expected, and from there Arm's recommended layout is three Cortex A710 CPUs for "medium" usage and four A510 CPUs for one low power background processing. Qualcomm doesn't follow the recommended layout, however, and after the Cortex X3 it has two different cores doing "medium" duty: a pair of Cortex-A715 processors and a pair of last-gen Cortex-A710 processors. After that, there are only three (and not the expected four) Cortex A510 processors in the background.
The reason Qualcomm added a pair of A710s is likely 32-bit support. Arm's recommended base layout for this new generation is a 64-bit chipset only, which means 32-bit applications won't be able to run. That's not a problem for most countries around the world - the Pixel 7 already ships as the world's first Android phone that can't run 32-bit apps (the whole OS isn't not quite 64-bit yet). The Google Play Store has required 64-bit binaries since 2019, and today you will never notice this lack of 32-bit support. For China, however, there's no Google Play Store, and free-for-all there means 32-bit support hasn't been dropped as quickly. It's also unclear if Google is ready for full 64-bit support, with the Pixel 7 still shipping with some 32-bit libraries. Mixing and matching with older cores allows Qualcomm to continue 32-bit support for another year.
Qualcomm promises a maximum Wi-Fi speed of 5.8Gbps with new Wi-Fi 7 support, but the big advantage is even more spectrum to share with your neighbors. If you're in a crowded building with lots of hotspots, it's easy to overwhelm your airways and cause everyone's Wi-Fi to malfunction. Like Wi-Fi 6e, Wi-Fi 7 adds an extra block of spectrum for your devices to choose from, helping you in congested spaces. The problem is, you'll need a Wi-Fi 7 hotspot to see these benefits, and there aren't many options right now. TP Link recently promised devices in the first quarter of 2023.
Qualcomm has already been beaten with Samsung's ray-tracing hardware support (with help from AMD) and Arm's Immortalis GPU, but now the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 can create effects too fancy lighting. I don't think there are any serious uses for mobile software for ray tracing yet.
Today, Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC, the company's flagship chip coming to many Android phones over the next few months. Along with the usual newer, better, and hopefully faster cores, a big new feature is the addition of Wi-Fi 7 support so you can enjoy better home wireless, provided to invest in a new router.
Qualcomm has claims for this new chip. The company claims the processor "improves performance by up to 35%" and has "up to 40% more power efficiency." The GPU is said to "deliver up to 25% faster performance, with up to 45% better power efficiency". Take both of these claims with a grain of salt, as Qualcomm last year promised a 20% CPU upgrade that never showed up in product shipments. Even if Qualcomm lives up to those performance promises, it would still be about a year behind the iPhone. The company is trying to remedy its uncompetitive performance with the (now legally encumbered) acquisition of Nuvia, but those chips aren't ready yet.
Let's start with the basics. It's a 4nm chip with an unusual layout containing four different CPU cores, all designed by Arm. The main core is a 3.2GHz Arm Cortex X3 - all good and expected, and from there Arm's recommended layout is three Cortex A710 CPUs for "medium" usage and four A510 CPUs for one low power background processing. Qualcomm doesn't follow the recommended layout, however, and after the Cortex X3 it has two different cores doing "medium" duty: a pair of Cortex-A715 processors and a pair of last-gen Cortex-A710 processors. After that, there are only three (and not the expected four) Cortex A510 processors in the background.
The reason Qualcomm added a pair of A710s is likely 32-bit support. Arm's recommended base layout for this new generation is a 64-bit chipset only, which means 32-bit applications won't be able to run. That's not a problem for most countries around the world - the Pixel 7 already ships as the world's first Android phone that can't run 32-bit apps (the whole OS isn't not quite 64-bit yet). The Google Play Store has required 64-bit binaries since 2019, and today you will never notice this lack of 32-bit support. For China, however, there's no Google Play Store, and free-for-all there means 32-bit support hasn't been dropped as quickly. It's also unclear if Google is ready for full 64-bit support, with the Pixel 7 still shipping with some 32-bit libraries. Mixing and matching with older cores allows Qualcomm to continue 32-bit support for another year.
Qualcomm promises a maximum Wi-Fi speed of 5.8Gbps with new Wi-Fi 7 support, but the big advantage is even more spectrum to share with your neighbors. If you're in a crowded building with lots of hotspots, it's easy to overwhelm your airways and cause everyone's Wi-Fi to malfunction. Like Wi-Fi 6e, Wi-Fi 7 adds an extra block of spectrum for your devices to choose from, helping you in congested spaces. The problem is, you'll need a Wi-Fi 7 hotspot to see these benefits, and there aren't many options right now. TP Link recently promised devices in the first quarter of 2023.
Qualcomm has already been beaten with Samsung's ray-tracing hardware support (with help from AMD) and Arm's Immortalis GPU, but now the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 can create effects too fancy lighting. I don't think there are any serious uses for mobile software for ray tracing yet.
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Qualcomm
