Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is the best Android chipset ever made, and this year, Qualcomm is going to top that with its own Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro. The model for this all-new chip is SM8975, and this was found in a leaked report that basically exposes everything about it down to the die size.
The node change may be the biggest difference across the two generations of 8 Elites. The N3P node is gone now. And NotebookCheck found out that the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro actually uses TSMC’s N2P node this time, which would mean the chip is made on a 2nm process.
The Node gets smaller, but the die size is actually bigger on the Gen 6. 126.2 mm² was the die size of the 8 Elite Gen 5. But now the die being made is roughly 134 mm². Moving to a denser process node usually chips away at the die size too, but not this time.
Anyway, the core architecture will change to a 2+3+3 setup, and from what we can tell, two prime cores are bound with three performance and three efficiency cores now. 4.8 GHz is a close guess, but the actual boost frequency wasn’t given in the leak anywhere.
But the Adreno 850 iGPU is something we’ve heard about more than once. This will be the GPU on the 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro with 18 MB GMEM cache, which is a nice little bump over Adreno 840. By the way, two dedicated Matrix ALU blocks are put on the chip this time.
These blocks are apparently new, and that will enable a feature they call AI Frame Fusion. This is made for gamers. It’s basically AI image upscaling and AI frame generation. This is the dedicated hardware on the chip. Maybe mobile game developers can take advantage of it. Give us upscaling and frame gen options in the game.
Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro is not the only chip. There’s a basic 8 Elite Gen 6 version or SM8950. They cut down a few specs. The onboard GPU is Adreno 845 with 12 MB of GMEM. And there are no Matrix ALU blocks here. At least the Pro and non-Pro have support for LPDDR5X and LPDDR6 RAM modules. These two chips will be revealed in September, exactly when the Xiaomi 18 Pro is coming. Keep watching the news for more updates.
