Qualcomm’s new beast bets everything on computational photography

The year ends, a new wizard is born. Like every November, Qualcomm delivers New high quality chip, the second generation of Qualcomm Snapdragon 8. Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is a commitment to computational imaging, highest efficiency, and maximum performance. These are all the features and specifications of the best processor from Qualcomm to date.

Your ISP is more important than ever, and so is efficiency

Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is manufactured on a four-nanometer process, and is a processor Eight cores, with three groups of clearly differentiated clusters (1 + 3 + 4). The first consists of the main core, which operates at a maximum frequency of 3.2 GHz. The second is a cluster of three cores with a maximum frequency of 2.8 GHz, and finally we have a cluster of cores dedicated to efficiency, with four cores with a maximum frequency of 2.0 GHz.

Qualcomm promises that this processor Up to 60% more efficient per watt, one of the major problems faced by the previous generation. The peak performance they reached was excellent, but the consumption was unsustainable over time and they had to lower the performance in order not to get too hot. With this 2nd generation, problems must be forgotten stuffy, at least on paper. In addition to being more efficient, Promises 35% faster CPU And 40% of the total energy saving compared to the previous generation.

In terms of the GPU, it’s the new Adreno 45% energy saving 25% faster. In this generation, compatible games will be able to enjoy real-time ray tracing, which promises to improve reflections, shadow detail, and overall realism in games. But the protagonist of Snapdragon is neither the CPU nor the GPU, It is an internet service provider.

Likewise, it is the first Snapdragon to include the AV1 codec with even video playback support 8K HDR at 60fps. Qualcomm is proud of its first “cognitive Internet Service Provider”. This part of the processor is responsible for processing image segmentation in real time. It’s something similar to what Google did in 2017 with the Pixel 2: Divide the different parts of the scene using semantic categories, in order to process the final image in a better way.

Likewise, they count Process information about video and imaging in real time from the preview, thus opening the door to full dynamic range visualization, as only Apple and Google have done so far. It remains to be seen how manufacturers take advantage of this ISP, but it sure looks good.

Connectivity is also improved, being WiFi 7 compliant and increasing latency promising greater efficiency thanks to the new FastConnect 7800 modem, capable of reaching speeds of up to 5.8Gbps over WiFi networks.

The first mobile phones with this processor are expected to arrive at the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023, which confirms that at least one version of the S23 will be installed with a 200 MP ISOCELL HP3.