Speculative Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 iGPU Looks Promising, Despite "sub-Pro" Performance
by T0@st Today, 02:41 Discuss (0 Comments)
Qualcomm introduced its Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 mobile chipset at the tail end of September, followed by yesterday's presenting of their Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 platform. On a surface level, this confusing naming scheme makes it difficult to tell the difference between the two fifth-gen options. Complicating matters further, semiconductor industry soothsayers have already moved onto predicting the nature of next generation Qualcomm offerings. This week, Digital Chat Station reckoned that Qualcomm's engineering department has moved onto the development of a mysterious "Snapdragon 8950" SoC. This forthcoming "standard" SKU could end up becoming the "Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6" chip; set to exist alongside a more potent "Pro" model.

Earlier today, Digital Chat Station shared fresh musings via their Weibo blog: "the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 platform's performance was pretty good, which gives me some confidence in next year's standard Snapdragon 8950. After all, it uses the same high-end TSMC 2 nm '2+3+3' Oryon CPU (as the Gen 6 Pro), with a slightly downgraded GPU. This chip will be positioned directly in the 4000 yuan (~$560 USD) price range." The speculated "Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro" option is expected to utilize a more powerful Adreno GPU, thus demanding a price premium. Insiders believe that Qualcomm will be selecting TSMC's newer 2 nm "N2P" for production of the sixth-gen Snapdragon 8 production. Reportedly, MediaTek leadership has made a similar decision regarding the makeup of its next flagship designs.