Qualcomm Unveils Snapdragon 8s Gen 3

Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chip, packed with AI features for use across a wider range of Android devices. The first device to be equipped with the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chip will be announced this month.

Senior director for chipset product management Ken Mok explained the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chip comprises selected features from the Snapdragon 8 series to make flagship features available to more people. “Now the Snapdragon flagship experiences are more attainable.”

The platform is compatible with a range of large language models (LLM) including Baichuan-7B, Llama 2, and Gemini Nano. Mok said the generative AI models mean Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chip supports up to 10 billion parameters directly on a device. “You can use generated AI-powered virtual assistants to get through the day seamlessly and intuitively, or with on-device stable diffusion create original content with your imagination.”

Qualcomm noted the fundamental differences in AI between Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 and Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 is the performance and speed at which images and words are generated. Fast Stable Diffusion and Speculative Decoding features enable higher performance in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 but are not currently compatible with the latest chip. The company stated Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 also features an always-sensing image signal processor (ISP), hyper-realistic mobile gaming, breakthrough connectivity, and lossless high-definition sound.

It integrates an 18-bit triple cognitive ISP which Mok said allows users to switch between zoom, vivid color, and extreme dynamic range camera lenses with clarity of up to 200MP. Compared with Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, the latest chip includes compatibility with 3GPP Release 17 and 5G power savings. It also has a newer CPU configuration with an extra performance core to improve multitasking.