icon
icon
icon
icon
Upgrade
icon

Qualcomm (QCOM.US) unveils the next-generation SoC Snapdragon 8 Plus: featuring its own Oryon CPU and NPU performance up to 12 times

AInvestMonday, Oct 21, 2024 7:20 pm ET
1min read

Qualcomm (QCOM.US) on Monday unveiled its latest flagship SoC, the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 (Snapdragon 8 Elite), a chip that gives smartphones notebook-class performance to help these devices take advantage of new artificial intelligence tools.

Qualcomm said its latest Snapdragon series would include its in-house Oryon processor design, which the company said would be 45% faster than the previous generation and more power efficient.

Qualcomm's products dominate the market for mobile devices running on Android, making the company's technology updates a key part of the competition between many global smartphone manufacturers and Apple (AAPL.US).

This time, Qualcomm decided to return to in-house processor designs as part of CEO Cristiano Amon's increased investment in homegrown technologies. The Snapdragon series became more reliant on Arm (ARM.US) designs under the previous leadership.

Oryon was developed by an engineering team Amon brought in when Qualcomm acquired startup Nuvia, which has become the core of the company's X Elite chips for notebook sales.

Notebooks with X Elite chips support artificial intelligence, a term widely used for "AI PCs," which software maker Microsoft (MSFT.US) has used as a way to show off its new AI capabilities. The chip also poses a threat to Intel's (INTC.US) dominance in the PC processor market.

Smartphones based on the new Snapdragon will also be able to run software based on generative AI on the device itself, Qualcomm said, with capabilities up to 12 times faster than before. The company said the chip uses a new Hexagon NPU to support the largest generative AI ecosystem in the world.

Disclaimer: the above is a summary showing certain market information. AInvest is not responsible for any data errors, omissions or other information that may be displayed incorrectly as the data is derived from a third party source. Communications displaying market prices, data and other information available in this post are meant for informational purposes only and are not intended as an offer or solicitation for the purchase or sale of any security. Please do your own research when investing. All investments involve risk and the past performance of a security, or financial product does not guarantee future results or returns. Keep in mind that while diversification may help spread risk, it does not assure a profit, or protect against loss in a down market.