As Qualcomm prepares to announce the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, leaks reveal what the smartphone chip maker has in store for the future. This Thursday (04), new rumors indicate the possible characteristics of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4, a platform for top-of-the-line cell phones that should debut only in 2024.
According to information from the popular leaker @OreXda from Twitter, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 may be the brand’s first chip with LPDDR6 RAM. The new technology should ensure more power efficiency and increase in memory bandwidth. Samsung is one of the pioneers in the development of this standard, along with DDR6 and GDDR7.
LPDDR6 Coming with Snapdragon N3E 👀 pic.twitter.com/sZY1n2MQxD
— Connor / 코너 / コナー (@OreXda) May 4, 2023
It is important to point out that the current standard used in several flagships is the LPDDR5X, which debuted on the market less than a year ago with the realme GT 2 Master Explorer.
Transitioning to new memory standards often takes years, so the prediction that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 will utilize LPDDR6 RAM is significantly optimistic and may not consider the cost of production issues of an entirely new technology.
While there is a possibility to utilize Samsung’s LPDDR6 RAM chips, Qualcomm is expected to hire TSMC’s foundry services to produce the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4. The leaker claims that the platform will be manufactured with N3E lithography — a review of the initial 3-nanometer process expected to be used in Apple’s A17 Bionic.
It is speculated that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 will be the brand’s first chipset with “Oryon” cores, designed by the group of experts at Nuvia – a company founded by former Apple engineers and acquired by Qualcomm in 2021.
There is still no detailed information about this CPU, but rumors indicate that the manufacturer aims to present it as a direct rival of processors for Apple smartphones and computers.
Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 should only be presented in 2024. Meanwhile, there is a lot of expectation for the launch of Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, which should take place in the middle of the last quarter of this year. Highlights of the upcoming chipset include its CPU clocked at up to 3.7GHz and a powerful Adreno 750 GPU.
