In the first year of AI mobile phones, why is the third-generation Snapdragon 8s popular?

2024 is known as the first year of AI mobile phones, and various manufacturers have shouted the slogan of All in AI. You only need to pay a little attention to it and you will find that the important driver of this AI mobile phone boom is the release of the new chip of Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 series.

At the Snapdragon Technology Summit last October, the biggest protagonist was actually AI. As Qualcomm's first mobile platform "specially built for generative AI", the improvement of the third-generation Snapdragon 8 in the AI engine can be described as "transformation", which is also a major differentiator for Qualcomm based on its technology products.

The newly launched third-generation Snapdragon 8S flagship platform is another use of this differentiating advantage, and thus makes it a truly next-generation flagship platform.

The flexible configuration brings a new generation of flagship experience

In terms of technical specifications, the CPU architecture of the third-generation Snapdragon 8s inherits the same core design as the third-generation Snapdragon 8, but with some tweaks. One 3.0 GHz Cortex-X4 core is used for high-load tasks, four 2.8 GHz Cortex-A720 cores are used for medium-load tasks, and three Cortex-A520 cores are used for light-load tasks at 2.0 GHz.

Compared to the third-generation Snapdragon 8, the third-generation Snapdragon 8s has a lower CPU core frequency and one less performance core, but still maintains high performance overall, while achieving a better energy efficiency ratio.

The Adreno 735 GPU is also the same idea, although it is not as large as the Adreno 750 GPU of the third-generation Snapdragon 8, but it is clocked at up to 1100MHz, and it also supports up to 24GB LPDDR5X memory, UFS 4.0 storage, and hardware-accelerated ray tracing. This shows that the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 is capable of delivering excellent graphics performance for most high-performance applications and games. This is accompanied by good energy efficiency.

It would be wrong to think that the third-generation Snapdragon 8S only relies on streamlined performance to improve energy efficiency to make a flagship "replacement", since it belongs to the Snapdragon 8 series, it means that the core technology of many Snapdragon 8 series flagship platforms has also been inherited.

In terms of AI performance, the third-generation Snapdragon 8s is also equipped with the latest Hexagon NPU neural network processor, which supports running multi-modal generative AI models on the device side, with model parameters up to 10 billion. The same three 18-bit cognitive ISPs as the third-generation Snapdragon 8 platform, combined with the Hexagon NPU for heterogeneous computing, can realize a series of intelligent imaging functions.

In terms of audio, connectivity, and security, the third-generation Snapdragon 8s is supported by Snapdragon Sound, Snapdragon X70 5G modem and RF system, FastConnect 7800 connectivity system, Wi-Fi 7, high-frequency multi-connection concurrency, and more. Overall, the third-generation Snapdragon 8s offers a comprehensive flagship-level experience, but the difference is that through technical optimization and cost control, it also takes into account the affordability of the price. This flexible and flexible configuration is the most critical point that it can become a new generation of flagships.

The choice of flagships has increased

For the positioning of the third-generation Snapdragon 8s new-generation flagship, the Xiaomi Civi 4 Pro equipped for the first time has undoubtedly made a perfect interpretation. This is the first time that the Xiaomi Civi series is equipped with the Snapdragon 8 series flagship processor platform, and then realizes the advancement from a "trendy machine" to a "trendy flagship".

A large number of high-end flagship features have been migrated to the Xiaomi Civi 4 Pro, giving it the title of "Little 14 Pro". Thanks to the third-generation Snapdragon 8s, compared with the previous generation, the Xiaomi Civi 4 Pro's CPU performance has increased by 66%, and the GPU performance has increased by 96%, and the same flagship-level performance experience has laid the foundation for its positioning jump.

In addition to the performance upgrade, the Xiaomi AISP, which previously performed well on the Xiaomi 14 Ultra, is also equipped on the Xiaomi Civi 4 Pro. Relying on the excellent computing power of the third-generation Snapdragon 8s, Xiaomi Civi 4 Pro has a high computing power of 42 TOPS, and brings Pro imaging and many AI technologies by fully calling each computing power module of the SoC and four independent large models.

In terms of computational photography, the third-generation Snapdragon 8s cognitive 18-bit triple ISP, which can process billions of pixels of massive data per second, compared with the traditional 14-bit ISP, the image data that the 18-bit ISP can capture is directly improved by more than 4,000 times, which can bring the ultimate dynamic range and color performance to the picture, providing underlying support for the Xiaomi Civi 4 Pro Leica Optical Professional Triple Camera.

It is worth mentioning that each of its ISPs also has the ability to "cognitive", which can achieve 12 layers of real-time semantic segmentation, recognize such as faces, hair, clothes, sky, grass, etc., and then optimize them independently, so that photos and videos can be enhanced in real time.

Combined with the support of Xiaomi AISP's high computing power, the beautification algorithm of Xiaomi Civi 4 Pro has also been upgraded to AI GAN, bringing 5 sets of AI smart beauty suits, 12 sets of AI portrait makeup, and 9 sets of portrait style sets to meet more shooting needs.

In addition to Xiaomi, other manufacturers such as Realme, iQOO and Honor's new phones are also on the way. Qualcomm's in-depth cooperation with a number of mobile phone manufacturers and the joint optimization of software and hardware will fully unleash the potential of the third-generation Snapdragon 8s, bringing more high-end experience to the market without shortcomings and covering products at a more full price point.

Accelerate the popularization of AI mobile phones

It is not difficult to see that the third-generation Snapdragon 8s continues the continuous investment route of the three underlying technologies of performance, imaging and AI, and the most concerned of them is AI technology.

The third-generation Snapdragon 8 platform, launched last year, upgraded the AI hardware unit to Hexagon NPU, and the heterogeneous computing architecture allows various sensors such as CPU, GPU, ISP, and DSP to call AI modules for acceleration, bringing powerful device-side AI capabilities and supporting large models with up to 10 billion parameters for local operation.

The most gratifying thing about the third-generation Snapdragon 8s is that it perfectly inherits the AI capabilities of the third-generation Snapdragon 8, and also supports large models with up to 10 billion parameters. In terms of support for generative AI, it includes the current mainstream multimodal generative AI models such as Baichuan-7B, Gemini Nano, Llama 2, and ChatGLM. The device-side AI capability also means that users do not need to rely on cloud resources and can perform complex AI tasks locally on the device.

For example, the AI photo extension of the previous third-generation Snapdragon 8 does not need to rely on the network and cloud computing, and can realize AI expansion of intelligent creativity through AI to understand the details and structure in the image. Now the "AIGC Smart Extended Image" function on the Xiaomi 14 series has come to the Xiaomi Civi 4 Pro, and other things such as real-time subtitles + AI summary, AI input assistant, AI album search, etc. are also available, which are inseparable from the underlying support of the third-generation Snapdragon 8s.

This means that in the future, we want to experience the latest and full AI capabilities, and we don't have to wait for the release of the top flagships. The arrival of the third-generation Snapdragon 8s will realize the implementation of AI technology on more terminal devices in a more flexible way, accelerating the penetration and popularization of AI mobile phones.

In the context of the rapid development of 5G and AI technology, Qualcomm's intention to launch the third-generation Snapdragon 8s as a driving force for AI popularization is obvious. It not only meets the market's demand for a new generation of mobile devices, meets the requirements of a wider range of consumers for high performance and high cost performance, but also provides good hardware support for AI mobile phone manufacturers and AI large model application developers, promotes the popularization of AI mobile phones, and becomes a "new generation flagship" under the trend of the new era.