Qualcomm has announced the schedule for its next Snapdragon Tech Summit, a three-day affair that kicks off on November 30 and where the company is expected to launch its next flagship chip that will power high-end Android smartphones and tablets. The rumor mill has been speculating about Qualcomm’s next top-of-the-line offering for a while now, so here is an overview of what to expect.
The chipmaker’s upcoming SoC will succeed the Snapdragon 888 and 888+ duo powering flagships from Samsung, Oppo, Xiaomi, and others. Going by benchmark results, it appears that Google’s in-house Tensor won’t be in the competition, and the main challengers will be Apple’s A15 Bionic powering the iPhone 13 series and Samsung’s next Exynos SoC that will add AMD graphics power to the mix.
Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Tech Summit takes place between November 30 and December 1. According to Ice universe — and a bunch of other less reliable tipsters — the new chip will be called the Snapdragon 898. Qualcomm’s naming scheme for its previous flagship processors — Snapdragon 888, 875, 865, 855, 845, 835, and 821 — does follow a pattern, which leaves the doors open for a Snapdragon 898 succeeding the current-gen Snapdragon 888. However, a previous report predicts the name to be Snapdragon 895. As per a detailed breakdown tweeted by prolific leaker Evan Blass, the upcoming chip's model number is SM8450, which makes sense considering the Snapdragon 888’s part number is SM8350.
A Promising Snapdragon Successor
Blass’ tweet mentions that the Snapdragon 888 will be based on the 4nm fabrication process. As per a recent report, Apple’s upcoming A16 Bionic chip that will power next year's iPhone 14 series will also be based on a 4nm process that's currently in development at TSMC. Coming to the core configuration, the Snapdragon 898 will reportedly rely on Kryo 780 cores based on ARM’s latest Cortex v9 architecture. Assuming that is true, Qualcomm will employ the Cortex-X2 core for the heavy lifting. For comparison, the Snapdragon 888 came equipped with a single X1-core that was given the ‘prime core’ status. If Qualcomm goes with a tri-cluster design again, the Snapdragon 898 will likely include a combination of Cortex-X1, Cortex-A710 cores for mid-level tasks, and Cortex-A510 cores for less-demanding workloads.
Google’s Tensor adopted a fresh 2+2+4 architecture, and it would be interesting to see if Qualcomm also goes the same route by arming the Snapdragon 898 with two Cortex-X2 cores for extra processing power. The next Qualcomm flagship SoC is touted to introduce the new Adreno 730 GPU, which takes over from the Adreno 660. If recent Geekbench 5 benchmark figures are to be believed, the next Qualcomm flagship chip could offer a performance jump of up to 30-percent. Qualcomm is also expected to go with a new Spectra 680 image signal processor, taking over the reins from Snapdragon 888+'s Spectra 580 ISP. As always, rumors should be taken with some degree of skepticism, and whether they are for an entirely new smartphone or just the chip inside.
Sources: Qualcomm, Ice universe/Twitter, Evan Blass/Twitter