Qualcomm will announce its second flagship SoC for smartphones that will feature its in-house Oryon cores, retaining the approach that it kept with the Snapdragon 8 Elite. Naturally, we should expect some notable changes from the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 2, but one tipster reveals that when comparing the CPU cluster of both chipsets, that configuration will remain unchanged, and there will be other technological advantages of the upcoming release, such as the improved lithography, upgraded graphics processor and more. Here are more details on the latest rumor.
Supporting ARM’s latest instruction sets means that the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 2 can tackle more complex workloads more efficiently, much like Apple’s M4 series
Compared to the Snapdragon 8 Elite, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 2 will one-up its predecessor in lithography as Digital Chat Station reveals that the chipset will be mass produced on TSMC’s third-generation 3nm process, which is also known as 3nm ‘N3P.’ We previously reported that Qualcomm had exclusively placed all chip orders with TSMC, as Samsung once again failed to deliver, and while the Taiwanese semiconductor giant has proven to be highly resourceful for its lucrative customers, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 2 could end up becoming more expensive due to being fabricated on a single foundry.
As for the CPU cluster, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 2 is said to feature a ‘2 + 6’ configuration, making it unchanged from the Snapdragon 8 Elite. However, a previous rumor doing the rounds stated that the new SoC will feature upgraded ‘Pegasus’ cores, with the performance cores said to be tested at a frequency of 5.00GHz. With the Snapdragon 8 Elite’s performance cores running at a default 4.47GHz, that is a decent jump in clock speeds. However, a major advantage for the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 2 is that it will support ARM’s SME, or Scalable Matrix Extension, allowing up to a 20 percent performance bump in multi-core workloads and potentially beating Apple’s M4.
For those who do not know, Scalable Matrix Extension is an ARM instruction set that allows chips to tackle intensive workloads more efficiently, which is why Apple’s M4 and the remaining powerful SoCs obtained higher results in Geekbench 6’s single-core and multi-core benchmarks. Additionally, ARM’s SVE, or Scalable Vector Extension, will also be added. Qualcomm may also introduce the new Adreno 840 GPU as part of the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 2. Unfortunately, the tipster has not shared any performance metrics of the graphics processor. Hopefully, we will stumble across multiple tests before the chipset’s official release.
This year, Qualcomm will maintain pace with its biggest rival in the smartphone race, Apple. In 2026, the same tipster mentioned that the San Diego firm will gravitate to TSMC’s 2nm technology to unveil not one but two flagship SoCs, one of which will likely be the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 3.
News Source: Digital Chat Station
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