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According to some rumors, Qualcomm is working on a new processor with the internal code name “Hamoa” which may have been thought to compete with Apple’s future M processors. The chip, which should be called Snapdragon 8cx Gen 4, is a 12-core SoC previously mentioned by well-known “insider” Kuba Wojciechowski and a direct evolution of Gen 3, seen in various devices in 2022.
Wojciechowski shared some details of the future Qualcomm processor, claiming it will be offered in several variants, with some featuring up to 8 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores, similar to Intel’s Alder Lake and Raptor Lake platforms. It’s possible that Qualcomm is testing several designs before deciding on the core configuration to sell to laptop makers, but we also have some details on possible specs in the meantime.
According to Wojciechowski, the 8 performance cores embedded in the “Hamoa” chipset will be able to achieve speeds up to 3.4GHz, while the 4 efficiency cores will be limited to 2.5 GHz. The CPU cores will be the Oryon cores based on a 2020 Phoenix Nuvia customization. Also according to the leaker, the SoC will offer 36 MB of L2 cache, divided into three clusters, as well as 8MB of L3, 12MB of system level, and 4MB of GPU cache. Furthermore, Kuba claims that the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 4 will mount the Adreno 740 GPU of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, which will support DirectX 12, OpenCL/DirectML and Vulkan 1.3 libraries.
The GPU is known and we know it is capable of manage three displays simultaneously, including two at 4K resolution and a third at 5K. It will also support 4K/120 FPS decoding and 4K/60 FPS encoding with AV1 codec, similar to Apple M2 platform. The Snapdragon 8cx Gen 4 will also include a Most powerful Tensor Hexagon NPU capable of delivering up to 45 TOPS of theoretical AI performance.
Finally, the SoC is said to support up to 64GB of 4200 MHz LPDDR5X RAM and will even have the option to support discrete GPUs via PCIe 4.0. In terms of storage and connectivity, it will offer support for NVMe and UFS 4.0, as well as Thunderbolt 4 connectivity with support for DisplayPort 1.4a.
But this new solution is not expected to arrive on the markets any time soon, and in fact the launch of the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 4 should be expected no earlier than 2024, which would give Apple at least another year of dominance in the market for laptops based on ARM.
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