Qualcomm
Qualcomm’s mid-cycle “plus” chip refresh – the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 – has been announced. As usual, Qualcomm promises some modest improvements over the existing 8 Gen 1 chip. The company said the chip will offer “10 percent faster CPU performance,” thanks to a 200MHz CPU boost (up to 3.2GHz now) and a 10 percent faster GPU. The real shock is a claim of “30 percent improved power efficiency” for the CPU and GPU.
For the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Plus, Qualcomm moves the chip from Samsung Foundry to TSMC, which is apparently where the power improvements come from. That’s a serious blow to Samsung’s 4nm process versus TSMC’s 4nm process, but it matches previous reports of issues at Samsung Foundry.
Swapping foundries as part of a mid-cycle upgrade isn’t common, and it seems Qualcomm has a bit of a salvage operation on its hands with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. The chip hasn’t fared very well in the real world. , with the CPU regularly delivering lower benchmark scores than the 2021 flagship Snapdragon 888.
Qualcomm doesn’t do much for phones in the beginning, regularly lagging behind Apple’s SoC team for years. Usually, the only reliable upgrade Qualcomm can deliver is a measurable percentage of benchmark improvements. The GPU managed to improve for 2022, but to see the CPU power decline after Qualcomm claimed it would be 20 percent faster is a big disappointment. After a foundry change and a CPU MHz boost, Qualcomm’s 2022 CPU could finally be faster than its 2021 counterpart.
