Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip offers hardware-accelerated ray tracing

K. Holt@krisholtNovember 15, 2022 6:00 PMIn this report: ray tracing, information, qualcomm, equipment, chip, snapdragon 8, snapdragon 8 gen 2, snapdragon summit, wifi 7, snapdragon, cellQualcomm

Qualcomm has announced its most up-to-date flagship cellular chipset, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. Together with producing it additional effective and successful than Gen 1 chips, Qualcomm says it has packed additional AI smarts into the new system.

The Snapdragon 8 will tap into the most recent Qualcomm AI Engine and upgraded Hexagon processor to offer “more rapidly all-natural language processing with multi-language translation and sophisticated AI digicam features,” the business promises. The processor has architectural upgrades that will help up to 4.35 occasions the AI general performance of Gen 1 chips, according to Qualcomm. There will be aid for an AI precision format known as Int4, which the enterprise suggests will guide to a 60 percent general performance/watt improvement above the earlier-gen chipset for sustained AI inferencing. Meanwhile, the Sensing Hub will have dual AI processors, which can help attributes these types of as personalized wake words and phrases.

Qualcomm notes that the upgrades will help new digicam-focused functions as will. It claims Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 will enhance photographs and movies automatically and in true-time working with semantic segmentation. This harnesses an AI neural network to make the camera knowledgeable of and independently optimize components these as faces, hair, outfits and skies. Qualcomm has tuned the chipset to assistance new sensors, these kinds of as Samsung’s 200-megapixel Isocell HP3. In the meantime, this is the 1st Snapdragon product with an AV1 codec that supports 8K HDR playback at up to 60 frames for each next.

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You will find an intriguing element for cellular gamers: Qualcomm claims there will be genuine-time components-accelerated ray tracing, which should really strengthen the visuals on supported game titles. The corporation statements the newest Adreno GPU and Kyro CPU supply more than 25 per cent faster performance and 40 p.c additional electricity performance than the Gen 1 chip. Qualcomm adds that it will offer you the to start with cell-optimized support for the Unreal Motor 5 Metahumans Framework, claiming that this will enable gamers “working experience photorealistic human people in their online games.”

On the connectivity front, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 will use AI to deal with 5G download speeds, latency, protection and electrical power performance. There will be help for dual 5G SIMs as perfectly as WiFi 7 (with speeds of up to 5.8 Gbps). In phrases of audio, phones that use the chipset will be ready to offer you spatial audio with dynamic head monitoring, 48kHz lossless music streaming and latency as minimal as 48ms.

Qualcomm notes that the 1st telephones with the Gen 2 chipset must be readily available by the end of the 12 months. Associates including ASUS Republic of Players, Honor, Motorola, OnePlus, Oppo, Sharp, Sony, Xiaomi and ZTE plan to use the chip in their devices. There is certainly likely to be additional news from Qualcomm in the coming times, as the corporation is hosting its Snapdragon Summit this 7 days.

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