Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 Confirmed with Oryon CPU; Here’s What to Expect

At MWC 2024, Qualcomm unveiled its forthcoming mobile chipset, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4, slated for release in October. What’s noteworthy is Qualcomm’s Chief Marketing Officer, Don McGuire’s confirmation that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 will incorporate custom Oryon CPU cores.

For years, Qualcomm has utilized its Kryo CPU cores, but this year marks the debut of a new CPU design on Snapdragon mobile chipsets.

Last October, the American chipmaker introduced the Snapdragon X Elite, an ARM-based desktop chipset for PCs, featuring Oryon CPU cores. Now, these same Oryon CPU cores are making their way to mobile chipsets. Watch the video confirmation below for more details.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Oryon architecture, it’s the brainchild of Gerard Williams III, the former chief architect of Apple Silicon. After departing from Apple, Williams founded Nuvia in 2019. Qualcomm later acquired Nuvia in 2021, and the same team developed the Oryon CPU, touted for its impressive power and efficiency, surpassing even Apple’s latest M-series chips, as evidenced by the recent Snapdragon X Elite benchmark leak.

Rumors suggest that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 will sport an octa-core configuration, comprising a (2+6) cluster with two high-performance cores and six high-efficiency cores.

Interestingly, Qualcomm appears to be phasing out little cores entirely. Additionally, it’s speculated that the chip maker will boost the maximum frequency to 4.0GHz on its smartphone chipset, a significant jump from the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3′s 3.3GHz clock speed observed on the Cortex-X4 core.

Furthermore, Qualcomm is reportedly transitioning to TSMC’s 2nd-generation 3nm process node (likely N3E) for the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 chipset. Overall, with the integration of Oryon CPU cores into the SD 8 Gen 4, Android flagships are poised to rival Apple’s A-series chipsets found in iPhones.

Apple currently lags behind in the GPU department when compared to Qualcomm’s Adreno GPU and Samsung’s Xclipse GPU, both developed on the AMD RDNA 3 architecture. With Qualcomm potentially poised to surpass Apple in the CPU department too, the tech landscape could see a significant shift in favor of Qualcomm’s offerings.