Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 is more powerful and efficient


Posted by Stefan on 2022-07-11, Last updated:
Qualcomm is changing the contract manufacturer from Samsung to TSMC for the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1. By switching to the TSMC 4 nm manufacturing process, the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 is not only 10 percent faster but also 15 percent more efficient than its predecessor. This makes Qualcomm's TOP SoC one of the fastest smartphone chips on the market.

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© Qualcomm, 2022

The improvements to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 are interesting because they were only achieved through the change in production. Qualcomm has not made any changes to the actual chip design. Qualcomm achieves the increase in performance by increasing the clock frequencies of the CPU and GPU.

The fastest CPU core (Cortex-X2) can now clock with up to 3.2 GHz (previously 3.0 GHz) and thus achieves the same maximum clock frequency as Apples A15 SoC in the current Apple iPhone 13.

In addition, Qualcomm has also increased the clock frequencies of the other CPU cores. The three Cortex-A710 now clock at 2.75 instead of 2.5 GHz (+ 10 percent), Qualcomm raises the four small efficiency cores (Cortex-A510) by 11 percent to 2.0 GHz.

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© Qualcomm, 2022

The clock frequency of the Qualcomm Adreno 730 GPU increases from 0.82 to 0.9 GHz. The theoretical FP32 processing power of the GPU increases from 2.2 to almost 2.5 GFLOP/s. Most people shouldn't notice this directly, but the difference in performance can be reliably measured.

Significant efficiency increase


But not only the computing power increases due to the production change. It is actually much more impressive that the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 has also become even more efficient. In theory, the new 4 nm manufacturing process from TSMC will increase the chips efficiency by 30 percent.

But Qualcomm has decided to limit this to half (15 percent) while increasing performance at the same time. The SoC's CPU and GPU scale roughly identically.

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© Qualcomm, 2022

Since the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 was already relatively efficient and is mostly used in premium devices anyway (they usually also have good battery capacities), Qualcomm's decision here can be understood.

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© Qualcomm, 2022

Comparison with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1


In our comparison between the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 and the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 you can see the performance improvements in the benchmark results. The Geekbench 5 benchmark, for example, scales almost 1:1 with the higher clock frequencies, so that a performance increase of 7 to 9 percent can be measured.

The distance to the Apple A15 is getting smaller


Compared with the Apple A15 processor, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 is coming closer. Apple's processor is still 24 percent faster in the single-core benchmark of Geekbench 5, but as soon as all CPU cores are involved, the lead shrinks to just 12 percent.

This is also due to the fact that the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 uses a total of 8 CPU cores (1+3+4), while Apple only uses 6 CPU cores (2+4) in the A15 SoC. Larger expansion stages with significantly higher performance are available from Apple in the Apple M1 or Apple M2, which are based on the same processor architecture.

The computing power of the graphics unit of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1, on the other hand, is impressive: it is a whopping 40 percent faster than the largest configuration (5 GPU cores) of the Apple A15.

Summary


Without having to create a new design, switching to TSMC has definitely paid off for Qualcomm. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 delivers a well-rounded package and improves the already good predecessor in crucial areas. The fact that the energy requirement is reduced by 15 percent with the ordinary increase in performance is impressive.
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© Qualcomm, 2022


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