At the Qualcomm Snapdragon Summit held in Maui, Hawaii, Qualcomm CEO Anmon officially released new generation flagship chips such as Qualcomm mobile processor Snapdragon 8Gen3 and notebook processor Snapdragon XElite. Generative AI landing terminal equipment has become a keyword throughout Qualcomm's new processors, and the performance and energy efficiency of notebook processors even surpass Apple and Intel's flagship products.
Qualcomm CEO Anmon said: "We are entering the AI era, and device-side generative AI is crucial to creating a powerful, fast, personalized, efficient, secure, and highly optimized experience. Snapdragon has unique advantages in helping shape and seize opportunities for device-side generative AI. In the future, Snapdragon-powered generative AI experiences will be everywhere."
The third-generation Snapdragon 8 processor is Qualcomm's first mobile platform built specifically for generative AI. It has a powerful NPU for mobile terminals and uses AI capabilities to enhance content creation, imaging, gaming, audio and connectivity experiences on top smartphones.
The third-generation Snapdragon 8 processor is built on a 4-nanometer process technology. The CPU frequency can reach up to 3.3GHz, with performance increased by 30% and energy efficiency increased by 20%. Qualcomm Hexagon NPU improves performance by 98%, energy efficiency by 40%, gaming performance by 25%, and energy efficiency by 25%. The generative AI landing terminal is the biggest highlight of this processor, which can run models with up to 10 billion parameters on the terminal side and generate up to 20 Tokens per second for large language models with 7 billion parameters.
Anmon specifically listed the comparison of the single-line performance and energy efficiency of the Snapdragon XElite processor CPU with Apple M2Max and Intel i9-13980HX. Qualcomm’s data shows that the performance and energy efficiency of the Snapdragon XElite processor’s CPU have clearly surpassed these two industry giants.
This new platform will be widely adopted on terminals of global OEMs and smartphone brands, including ASUS, Honor, iQOO, Meizu, NIO, Nubia, OnePlus, OPPO, Realme, Redmi, Red Magic, Sony, vivo, Xiaomi and ZTE. Android flagship terminals equipped with the third-generation Snapdragon 8 are expected to be available in the next few weeks.
After cultivating the notebook processor market for several years, Qualcomm named the notebook processor series Snapdragon XElite this year. Snapdragon XElite is newly built for generative AI, with an industry-leading NPU and best-in-class CPU performance and energy efficiency among many PC platforms that support Windows 11.
The Snapdragon XElite platform uses a customized integrated Qualcomm Oryon CPU. This industry-leading mobile computing CPU has twice the performance of competing products; when reaching the same peak performance, the power consumption is only one-third of competing products.
Snapdragon XElite is also designed for AI and supports generative AI models running more than 13 billion parameters on the terminal side. With an AI processing speed of 4.5 times that of Qantas' competing products, it will continue to expand Qualcomm's leading advantage in the AI field. OEM manufacturers are expected to launch PCs equipped with Snapdragon XElite in mid-2024.
Snapdragon XElite also uses a 4-nanometer process technology. Compared with X86 equivalent products, the performance of Qualcomm Oryon CPU's 12 high-performance cores is twice that of competing products. The GPU performance supports 4.6 trillion floating-point calculations, which is also twice that of competing products, and supports three ultra-high-definition monitors.
This super powerful generative AI processor can run a 13 billion parameter model on the terminal side and generate 30 Tokens per second when facing a 7 billion parameter large language model. The performance of the AI engine specially built for AI has reached 75TOPS, the performance of HexagonNPU has reached 45TOPS, and the AI processing speed has reached 4.6 times that of competing products. In addition, the Snapdragon XElite processor continues to maintain leading PC energy efficiency, with power consumption 68% lower than competing products when reaching the same peak performance.
Anmon said that this new PC platform has surpassed competing laptop CPUs and set a new benchmark for AI performance. For example, the terminal-side chat assistant for Windows 11 PC can process 30 tokens per second, or it can use StableDiffusion to generate images on a smartphone in less than one second.
In addition, Qualcomm also released the first-generation Qualcomm S7 and S7Pro audio platforms at this summit.
It is worth mentioning that Maui, where the summit was held, suffered a serious fire in August this year. Lahaina, a city on the northwest side of the island, was almost completely burned by wildfires. Lahaina is also the development code of the previous Snapdragon 888 chip.
After the Lahaina wildfire, Qualcomm said it would continue to hold events in Maui and do its best to support local communities and post-disaster reconstruction. The Waliea area in the southern part of the island was not affected after the wildfire. This is also a key tourist resort area where the governor of Hawaii hopes that tourists will continue to visit to support the local economy. Before the opening ceremony, the indigenous people performed conch trumpets and carols to express their welcome and gratitude to the Qualcomm Snapdragon Summit.