Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 unveiled: first on TSMC 4nm node, first with ARMv9 CPU cores

The brand new Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 arrives as a big improve over its predecessor and a departure from earlier designs within the collection. It has enhancements in all of the key spaces of efficiency, potency, gaming, AI, digicam and audio.

The Gen 4 chip would be the first within the collection fabbed on TSMC’s 4nm node. Earlier generations have used a 4nm node from Samsung and a 6nm one from TSMC.

This era is the primary within the 6-series to make use of ARMv9-based CPU cores – Cortex-A720 (2.3GHz) because the high core, 3 extra A720 (2.2GHz) as large cores and 4 Cortex-A520 (1.8GHz) as small cores. Earlier generations used ARMv8 designs (Cortex-A78/A55).

The efficiency uplift in comparison to the Gen 3 chip is attention-grabbing – regardless of the generational improve in CPU design, the CPU uplift is best 11% (measured in Geekbench 5.2 single-thread).

The brand new Adreno GPU brings a extra vital development with a 29% spice up in efficiency. Qualcomm is mum on main points at the GPU, however that’s a super spice up. Additionally, the brand new chip is 12% extra environment friendly than its predecessor.

The Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 is the primary within the circle of relatives to improve INT4 – this may occasionally permit optimized fashions with extra parameters to slot in restricted quantities of RAM. Qualcomm is operating on a textual content summarization AI, as an example. The corporate discussed that there will probably be a minimal reminiscence requirement for LLMs working at the tool, nevertheless it didn’t give a precise quantity.

The chipset helps as much as 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM (as much as 3,200MHz), LPDDR4X (2,133MHz) could also be an choice for inexpensive designs. For garage, the chip helps UFS 3.1. Stressed connectivity contains USB-C 3.1 that may force an exterior show at as much as 4K @ 60Hz, 10-bit colours and HDR10+ are supported as neatly.

For the tool itself, the 6 Gen 4 chip can force shows as much as 1080p+ answer and at as much as 144Hz refresh fee. Cell GPUs are taking a web page from their desktop opposite numbers and this Adreno helps Snapdragon Sport Tremendous Solution (upscaling for gaming at as much as 4K) and Adreno Body Movement Engine (frame-gen that doubles the body fee whilst preserving energy intake low).

For the digicam, the chip options triple 12-bit ISPs with improve for sensors as much as 200MP. It could actually document video at as much as 4K HDR, however the body fee prohibit remains to be 30fps at that answer. HDR10 and HLG codecs are supported for video, 10-bit HEIF for pictures. There’s {hardware} acceleration for H.265 and VP9 playback (however no AV1).

The connectivity phase is lovely acquainted. The 5G modem helps sub-6GHz (4×4 MIMO) and mmWave (2×2 MIMO) and downlink speeds of as much as 2.9Gbps. Wi-Fi 6E (802.11ax) is supported (together with the 6GHz band), as is Bluetooth 5.4 with aptX Adaptive. The GPS receiver helps triple frequency positioning (L1/L5/L2).

Realme, Oppo and Honor will probably be a few of the first smartphone makers to release gadgets in keeping with the Snapdragon 6 Gen 4. There’s no exact timing, we can listen extra “within the coming months”. We did listen that India will probably be one of the most first markets to look the brand new chipset. It seems that, tool makers are concentrated on a shockingly low worth vary of $100-$150.

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