In the early morning of October 26, 2023, Qualcomm brought a new flagship mobile processor - Snapdragon 8 Gen3 at a press conference in Hawaii. This processor uses the same 4nm process as its predecessor, but the CPU performance is increased by 30%. This is undoubtedly a surprise, just like the Huawei Mate60 through system optimization, the performance of the process has improved by leaps and bounds.
By what means, Qualcomm achieved a huge performance improvement without changing the process? The simple answer is architecture tuning and hardware-level software co-design. Snapdragon 8 Gen3 adjusts the CPU core layout from 1+4+3 to 1+5+2, reducing a small core and adding a large core. In addition, Qualcomm also optimizes software, such as application fast startup, background activity management, etc., to further improve the overall performance.
It can be said that Qualcomm is following Huawei's long-term "hardware ×software" development path. Both companies are clear that at a time when Moore's Law tends to fail, it is no longer possible to achieve huge performance improvements by relying solely on process reduction, and it is necessary to rely on architectural innovation and deep collaboration between software and hardware to continue to improve processor performance.
Of course, Qualcomm's "learning" of Huawei is not limited to the CPU, but also has the following aspects:
First, multi-screen collaboration. Huawei implements functions such as document transfer and multi-screen control between PCs and mobile terminals, and Qualcomm has also launched a similar multi-screen collaboration solution in the Snapdragon ecosystem.
The second is the anti-overheating design. Qualcomm chips have been nicknamed "fire dragons" in the past, and the problem of fever has been criticized. Now that Qualcomm has learned Huawei's "cold wonderland" heat dissipation design concept, the power consumption of the Snapdragon 8 Gen3 has been significantly reduced, and the thermal problem has been greatly improved.
The third is Starlight headphone technology. The Snapdragon S7 chip launched by Qualcomm supports Qualcomm's self-developed starlight link technology, which can achieve low-latency, lossless sound quality transmission, which is similar to Huawei's self-developed starlight technology.
This shows that the top companies in the industry will learn from each other to get better products and user experience. Qualcomm imitates Huawei's successes and adds impetus to the progress of the chip industry. At the same time, we also see the innovation and unique advantages of the two companies.
For example, in artificial intelligence, Qualcomm deeply combines AI computing power with Snapdragon 8 Gen3 and Snapdragon XE processors, so that these chips can locally run AI models with tens of billions of parameters without networking. This provides a strong guarantee for protecting user privacy. In contrast, Huawei pays more attention to device-cloud collaboration, and distributes complex computing tasks to the cloud to achieve efficient and low-power intelligent computing.
It is foreseeable that mobile devices will enter the era of "Internet of Everything" in the future. Qualcomm has begun to build its own ecology from the chip level, without brand restrictions, to provide users with a unified and seamless experience. This is also the general trend of the industry. With its accumulation in operating systems and chips, Huawei is fully capable of meeting Qualcomm's challenges. In the future, this will prompt the two groups to continuously surpass themselves in terms of "hardware×software × ecology" and bring more innovation to consumers.
To sum up, Qualcomm's conference was obviously inspired and borrowed by Huawei. However, Qualcomm has also given full play to its own advantages and made breakthroughs in the fields of chip performance, artificial intelligence, and multi-screen collaboration. This not only presents the innovation trend of "you catch up with me" of the two leading companies in the industry, but also brings richer choices and experiences to users' digital lives.
For the two companies, the so-called "heroes give each other", competition and cooperation are equally important, and jointly promote scientific and technological development and ecological prosperity. We look forward to more surprises from them and making life better in the intelligent era.