Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 series continues to dominate the flagship smartphone market. But this next generation is going to be a little different. Looking at the detailed information provided by Digital Chat Station in a recent post about the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 (SM8950), it seems that Qualcomm is now playing a completely new game with TSMC’s 2nm process.
This chip has not been officially announced yet, but according to leakers, this is going to be the flagship chipset of the end of 2026. Digital Chat Station shared what it has in an exclusive post, which is much more detailed and technical than the previous leaks.
What’s new in this chip?
This chip is being manufactured on TSMC’s 2nm process. Earlier, Qualcomm used to work with Samsung, but this time it is starting a completely new deal with TSMC. There has been a big change in the CPU architecture – 2+3+3 configuration. This means that three types of Oryon cores have been used. L2 cache is 16MB, there is an Adreno 845 as the GPU with 6 slices. GMEM is 12MB and SLC cache is 6MB. Memory support is up to LPDDR5X + UFS 5.0.
SM8975 – This is the Pro version (Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro) which will be more powerful. It may have Adreno 850 GPU, larger GMEM and LPDDR6 support. However, Digital Chat Station says that some cache and peripheral specs have been cut in the standard version compared to the Pro version.
How big an upgrade is this?
From what is known so far, compared to the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, everything has changed in the process node, CPU architecture and GPU. Power efficiency is likely to be much better due to the 2nm process. In addition, the design of the new Oryon core seems to be more stable in multi-tasking and heavy load performance.
Although the official benchmarks are not out yet. According to the leaks, this chip can be used in the Samsung Galaxy S-series, Xiaomi Number Series and some flagship Phone.
Last words
The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 is still only at the leak stage. This post by Digital Chat Station has the most detailed information so far. It looks like Qualcomm is focusing more on real-world performance and efficiency, not just paper specs. But there is a big question here that how much such a powerful chipset can control the heat of a phone.
