The Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 will satisfy the need for a powerful chipset until the end of the year, so Qualcomm is looking at what comes next. And what comes next is a very unusual 1 + 2 + 2 + 3 CPU configuration, according to leakster Digital chat station.
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 CPU will presumably feature the following cores: one Cortex-X3, two Cortex-A720s, two A710s, and three A510s. Or to use their codenames, 1x Makalu-Elp, 2x Makalu, 2x Matterhorn, and 3x Klein-R1.
If you followed ARM’s announcement, the names Makalu and Matterhorn should be familiar to you. These were heralded as the follow-ups of the Cortex-X1 / A78 generation. The Matterhorn is clearly the X2 / A710 step in the ranking, the Makalu is the next generation.
The Cortex-X3 and A720 promise an increase in peak CPU performance of up to 30% over the X1 / A78 cores and a minor jump over the current Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. Presumably, this for performance at the same speed of clock.
What matters since Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 (SM8550, codenamed Kailua ES) will be manufactured on TSMC’s N4 node, according to DCS. This is the same 4nm process that the 8+ Gen 1 is built on, so we can’t expect large increases in clock speed.
This will likely be the first mobile chipset to feature four different CPU cores (current chipsets use three types). But if that’s what it takes to deliver next-generation performance, then so be it.
Either way, the Gen 2 flagship chip is said to use an Adreno 740 GPU, which sadly doesn’t tell us much. It will use the same architecture as the 730 in current chips, but any detail performance improvements will have to wait for future losses.
Qualcomm typically announces its flagship chipset for the next generation of phones at the end of the year with a big in-person event in Hawaii (explaining all the Hawaii-themed codenames).
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