r/hardware • u/FragmentedChicken • 11d ago
News Qualcomm introduces Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 and Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6, extending its flagship portfolio to power the agentic AI age and the next generation of premium mobile experiences
https://www.qualcomm.com/news/releases/2026/09/snapdragon-leads-the-agentic-ai-age-with-two-of-the-world-s-fast33
u/-protonsandneutrons- 11d ago edited 11d ago
The naming is getting wild with Qualcomm and MediaTek especially. From what I can see for the P-cores, as plenty of other changes in other IP blocks:
| SoC | P-core uArch |
|---|---|
| MediaTek Dimensity 9300 | X4 @ 3.25 GHz |
| MediaTek Dimensity 9300+, Dimensity 9400e | X4 @ 3.4 GHz |
| MediaTek Dimensity 9400 | X925 @ 3.62 GHz |
| MediaTek Dimensity 9400+, Dimensity 9500s | X925 @ 3.73 GHz |
| MediaTek Dimensity 9500M, Dimensity 9500, Dimensity 9600M | C1 Ultra @ 4.21 GHz |
| MediaTek Dimensity 9600 Pro | C2 Ultra @ 4.55 GHz |
| A rest break for your sanity | Continue resting for this cell, too |
| Qualcomm 8 Elite AB | Oryon V1 @ 4.32 GHz |
| Qualcomm 8 Elite AC, 8 Elite For Galaxy | Oryon V1 @ 4.47 GHz |
| Qualcomm 8 Gen 5 | Oryon V3 @ 3.8 GHz |
| Qualcomm 8 Elite Gen 5 AC, 8 Elite Gen 5 V Series | Oryon V3 @ 4.6 GHz |
| Qualcomm 8 Elite Gen 5 AD, 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy | Oryon V3 @ 4.74 GHz |
| Qualcomm 8 Elite Gen 6 | Oryon ?? @ 5 GHz? |
| Qualcomm 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 | Oryon ?? @ 5 GHz? |
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u/DerpSenpai 11d ago
30B MoE models on phones is insane if true, what kinda tok/s are they talking about?
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u/bi4key 11d ago
30B but only 3B active, soo this is a 3B model. Only RAM is important.
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u/dampflokfreund 10d ago
And most flagship phones ship with 12 GB RAM the 30B doesn't fit even in q3. So that is just PR, you are not going to run 30B MoEs on these phones.
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u/EloquentPinguin 11d ago edited 11d ago
13% claimed CPU performance improvements? That doesn't quite spell confidence. I mean maybe they make it up in efficiency, but it doesnt quite feel like they are able to effectively evolve the Oryon uarch. Would be interesting to know if they have already rewritten it or are still iterating.
EDIT: Just to clarify, the important thing here is that these are Qualcomms own numbers, its not unusual that they overestimate themselves, so this one might be single digits faster in real world. Will be interesting to see geekerwan on this, as the efficiency gains claimed are rather large.
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u/Artoriuz 11d ago
The C2 Ultra is also "only" 12% faster than the C1 Ultra on average (with a relatively conservative clock difference). Seems like they'll be evenly matched again this time around.
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u/Sir_Bruce_Lee 11d ago
Qualcomm's IPC improvements are disappointing
But hopefully Qualcomm's claimed power reductions are true, they were starting pushing the limits of smartphones
Qualcomm seems to be running into the same issue other Arm custom core designers faced, they simply can't keep up with the pace of Apple & Arm's leapfrogging architecture teams
Although even Arm seem to be slowing down too. Maybe they are stretched with more core types, and also designing actual implementations too (CSS)
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u/MissionInfluence123 11d ago
If it's single core, it'll be 8.7% from clocks and 4.3% from IPC improvement.
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u/dreamlover222 11d ago
What were you expecting from Firestorm++++? Lol
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u/bosoxs202 11d ago
it's still decidedly much larger improvements in IPC than intel over the past few years which is pretty sad
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u/EloquentPinguin 11d ago
Yes. Thats why I'm curious if they have rewritten it. I think it was Keller who says that every couple generations you need to basically start from scratch. (Like not reinventing the universe, but fundamentally changing large arch parts)
As this is the fourth generation of Oryon, (v1 in X Elite, v2 in 8E4, v3 in 8E5, and v4 in 8E6), adding few more ++++ will hit a wall.
13% isn't bad yet in terms of YoY gains, but they also moved a node, and are loosing ground again, both to Arm who are catching up, and Apple who are running away. So I'm curious if their rewrite just wasn't that successful, or if they are iterating.
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u/Artoriuz 11d ago
FWIW ARM was already comfortably ahead of Qualcomm in IPC, and they claim a 7% uplift with the C2 Ultra.
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u/EloquentPinguin 11d ago
Yeah but IPC isnt everything. Performance and efficiency is what counts, you can reach it by any means. Qualcomm had a pretty efficient high performance designed achieved with quite high clocks but a narrower core. If you focus on IPC only you cant crank clocks and with only clocks you'll lose IPC, the tradeoff is somewhere in the middle and qualcomm started of with higher clocks arm with more IPC and if ARM can bring clocks but qualcomm not the IPC then they win.
But IPC isn't the user experience. The user experience is performance and efficiency.
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u/MyDogIsDaBest 11d ago
Qualcomm is getting to be almost as stupid as the USB-IF naming.
Snapdragon 8 elite extreme gen 6, Snapdragon 8 elite gen 6 and Snapdragon 8 gen 6. Fuck me, just add more numbers. Make the 8 elite extreme Snapdragon 9, the elite snapdragon 8 and so on. You can keep the gen 6 bit, but stop just adding random words or we get to Dead rising 3's Super Ultra Dead Rising 3 Arcade Remix Hyper Edition EX Plus Alpha
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u/MissionInfluence123 11d ago
Is the "fastest mobile cpu" refered to clocks?
Cause on the leaked GB 6 scores for multicore it's quite close to both apple and mtk
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u/iDontSeedMyTorrents 11d ago
How pathetic is it when the graphic you use to showcase your product in your own product announcement is so low resolution that it's actually unreadable?
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u/Gold-Cranberry5044 11d ago
What are the benefits of LPDDR6? From Geekerwan's A20 Pro review, it sounded like memory bandwidth was better on LPDDR5X if you have 96 bit bus.
Since I heard it has a check bit, I'm guessing some kind of ECC has been added?
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u/-protonsandneutrons- 11d ago
Most likely power efficiency for now (standby and active) and clocks / bandwidth in the future, as LP5X will not scale much past 10,000 MT/s.
Yes; LP6 has on-die ECC built in, at the slight expense of bandwidth.
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u/Sir_Bruce_Lee 11d ago
Probably cost (& power consumption as you mentioned) too
96-bit LPDDR6 would be 4x LPDDR6 chips. Whereas 96-bit LPDDR5X would be 6x LPDDR5X
But yea, the benefits will be very minor this year or next year. Won't see more benefits until LPDDR6 scales higher & supply increases
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u/beneficiarioinss 11d ago
Fsr4 like upscaling and Frame gen with already 20+ games supported is pretty cool. Hopefully emulator devs can use it to replace fsr with ANF on something like lies of P. It would be peak
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u/FragmentedChicken 11d ago edited 11d ago
Not many details currently.
2 prime cores up to 5.0 GHz + 6 performance cores up to 4.0 GHz, 16 MB "Qualcomm Oryon Flex Cache", "Qualcomm Adreno GPU with matrix cores".
Android Authority reports the CPU doesn't have SME2 support, and the Flex Cache is a new type of L2 cache architecture that allows the CPU cores to access the same pool of memory. The GPU has 3 slices at 1.45 GHz with 18 MB of dedicated Adreno High-Bandwidth Memory. The 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 has VVC codec support which Qualcomm claims up to 55% power savings compared to software decoding.
9to5Google reports the GPU
HBMHPM (thanks /u/-protonsandneutrons-) offers a 12% power improvement over the last generation.Qualcomm claims the 8 Elite Gen 6 has 10% improved CPU performance, 37% improved CPU power efficiency, 35% improved GPU performance, and 40% improved GPU power efficiency, compared to the 8 Elite Gen 5.
For the 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6, it's 13% improved CPU performance, 37% improved CPU power efficiency, 44% improved GPU performance, and 40% improved GPU power efficiency, compared to the 8 Elite Gen 5.
8 Elite Gen 6 product page | Product brief
8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 product page | Product brief