Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 with generative AI on-device is released by Qualcomm

As a less expensive option to its predecessor, Qualcomm has released the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3, a flagship-grade processor with on-device AI capabilities. It has 4nm architecture and can support generative AI models with high speed. Hardware-accelerated ray tracing and HDR gaming are promised by the chipset. Upcoming smartphones from Xiaomi, Redmi, iQoo, Honour, and Realme will run on it.

Qualcomm also revealed that the first handset to be powered with the latest chipset will be available later this month, but did not reveal any further information regarding the phone or its specifications.

The newly unveiled Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 is a 4nm octa-core chipset with a Prime core (Cortex-X4) clocked at 3.0GHz, four 'performance' cores with a peak clock speed of 2.8GHz, and three 'efficiency' cores clocked at 2.0GHz. The Adreno GPU onboard the chipset offers support for HDR gaming along with real-time hardware-accelerated ray tracing in supported games, according to the company. It will support up to 24GB of LPDDR5x memory at up to 4200MHz and UFS 4.0 storage.

Qualcomm also touts the AI capabilities of the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chip, which offers support of on-device generative AI models with up to 10 billion parameters — the chip supports over 30 large language models (LLMs) and large vision models (LVMs) at launch, including Gemini Nano, Llama 2, and Baichuan-7B. The company says that an on-device generative AI assistant will be able to generate content from written, spoken, or image prompts, while a photo expansion tool can generate images outside an image's frame using AI.

Smartphones equipped with the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 will be able to capture images at 200-megapixel images, and the chipset features a triple 18-bit ISP setup. The chip also supports AI-based face detection that is enabled via an always-sensing ISP via Qualcomm Sensing Hub. The company's Snapdragon Low Light Vision (LLV) technology is also said to improve the quality of videos captured in dim environments.

Qualcomm says the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 supports 4K and Quad-HD+ displays at 60Hz and 144Hz, respectively. The chipset also supports an ultra-low power always-sensing camera that is said to be isolated from the rest of the phone's hardware and allows the handset to enable quick facial unlocking.