Qualcomm Ready to Dominate Against Apple's Next M-series Chips

A new chipset being developed by Qualcomm, a semiconductor manufacturer, will purportedly compete with Apple's future M-series processors. The upcoming chip is being worked on under the codename "Hamoa," and according to Gizmochina, it will be branded as the "Snapdragon 8cx Gen4".

Kuba Wojciechowski, a tipster, had previously suggested the 12-core SoC, but he now asserts that the silicon's name will be Snapdragon 8cx Gen 4.

He leaves out the question of whether Qualcomm's Oryon cores, specialised products made possible by the company's acquisition of Nuvia, will be found in the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 4.

Qualcomm Chipset

In addition, he asserts that there is a shared L2 cache of 12 MB and an L3 cache of 8 MB for each block of four cores. Qualcomm is said to not be developing a new graphics processor for the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 4 because it is rumored to use the same Adreno 740 graphics processor as the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2.

It is still a powerful GPU, but the limitations may start to show up when used in Windows notebooks rather than smartphones. Even so, the data he provides is intriguing on paper, with the energy-efficient and performance cores of the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 4 being tested at 2.50GHz and 3.40GHz, respectively.

The company is probably working on several chipsets, but the one with eight performance cores is said to be the best performing. However, it is unclear whether the new processor will include Qualcomm's Oryon cores.

According to the report, the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 4 is expected to have the same Adreno 740 graphics processor as the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. As a result, it appears that the company is not developing a new graphics processing unit (GPU) for the device.

During Qualcomm's Investor Day in November of last year, Qualcomm CTO Jim Thompson announced the company's plans to develop a next-generation ARM-based system-on-a-chip (SoC) that would compete with Apple's M-series processors for Windows PCs.

Meanwhile, at Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2023, the chipmaker unveiled "Snapdragon Satellite," a satellite-based two-way capable messaging solution for premium smartphones that would compete with Apple's satellite messaging feature.