Snapdragon 8 Gen 4: In-House CPU Cores Showing Minor Power Drain, Still Room for Adjustment

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Introducing Snapdragon 8 Gen 4, Qualcomm ventures into a new realm by abandoning the use of ARM-designed processing cores like Cortex or Mali for the first time. Instead, they adopt the research findings of Nuvia, a chip development company acquired by Qualcomm in 2021. The CPU cores, developed by Nuvia engineers under Qualcomm's wing last year, were unveiled as Oryon, representing the first iteration of the Phoenix architecture.

With Oryon, Qualcomm anticipates direct competition with Apple Silicon's processing chip architecture, spanning from smartphones to tablets and even personal computers. Both are proprietary designs based solely on ARM's instruction set architecture. However, according to unofficial sources, it seems that Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 is not performing as expected by Qualcomm.

Rumors suggest that the Phoenix CPU cores on Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 are currently consuming more power than Qualcomm had hoped for. According to leaked sources, the situation appears to be quite serious, requiring immediate attention from Qualcomm and Nuvia engineers. This issue seems to persist despite Qualcomm's plans to implement TSMC's N3E fabrication process, which is expected to bring significant improvements in performance and power efficiency compared to Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, utilizing the N4P process.

According to unofficial reports, Qualcomm is currently testing Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 with a configuration of 2 high-performance cores and 6 power-efficient cores, aiming to rival the performance of A-series chips found in iPhones. However, to achieve higher performance, clock speeds must also be high, resulting in increased power consumption.

It's not just Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 for phones; it seems that Snapdragon 8cx Gen 4 for Windows ARM laptops is also facing similar obstacles, significantly affecting battery life and thermal performance. However, for a laptop, there is much more space available for cooling solutions or larger capacity batteries compared to the compact interiors of smartphones. Moreover, all attention will be focused on Snapdragon 8 Gen 4, as the performance of 8cx Gen 4, whether it matches Intel Core 14th Gen or Apple M2, M3, will not garner as much attention as the chips found in the highest-end Android smartphones expected to be released in late 2024 or early 2025.

To be fair, even the A17 Pro in the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, which have just been released, require increased power consumption to achieve performance differences, despite the A17 Pro being manufactured on TSMC's 3nm process. As a result, the performance gap between the A17 Pro and A16 Bionic is quite significant.

But that's a story for next year. Coming up soon, in late October 2023, Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 will be officially unveiled.

According to WCCFTech

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