Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 was designed for Generative AI

On Tuesday, Qualcomm kicked off the Snapdragon Tech Summit, which also means the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 was announced. This is the company’s newest flagship chipset, that we expect to see in a lot of new phones. And some new phones starting in just a few weeks – according to Qualcomm.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 is a new chipset that was designed meticulously with Generative AI in mind. And that should not be a surprise. Generative AI is really taking over these days, and many phones are adding features using it. So it makes sense to add it into the processor, so those features can be taken to the next level.

Get ready for phones with 24GB of RAM

While the Generative AI stuff is cool, and the Qualcomm AI Engine is nice to see here, the real news is in the specs of the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. Which tells us a few things to expect for 2024 and even later in 2023. One of those things is that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 is able to support up to 24GB of RAM, and that is up to LP-DDR5x at up to 4800MHz. Now we’ve heard that Samsung has been manufacturing 24GB RAM for phones lately, and now we are likely to see it coming very soon.

A few other interesting tidbits from the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 spec sheet include device display support for 4K @ 60Hz and QHD+ @ 144Hz. So this hasn’t really changed much. But there is external display support for up to 8K @ 30Hz and up to 1080p @ 240Hz.

Finally, this is running on a 4nm process, the same as its predecessor, but on a slightly updated process from TSMC. Interesting that Qualcomm isn’t making the leap to 3nm like Apple did and MediaTek is doing.

Qualcomm says it expects phones from ASUS, HONOR, iQOO, Meizu, NIO, Nubia, OnePlus, OPPO, realme, Redmi, RedMagic, Sony, vivo, Xiaomi and ZTE to come with the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, starting in just a few weeks. Notably absent there is Samsung and Google. While Google is definitely sticking with Tensor, Samsung is a bit of a surprise. But it does not mean that the Galaxy S24 will be going all-in on Exynos. This same thing happened last year, only for Samsung to use the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2.