Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 Chipset With Enhancements for Gaming, Generative AI Unveiled

Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 chipset was unveiled by Qualcomm on Wednesday, with significant upgrades compared to the previous generation. The company's newest mobile processor is aimed at offering enhanced capabilities and optimised performance for affordable smartphones. The mobile platform also becomes the first in the series to get support for generative artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities and Snapdragon Game Super Resolution's gaming scene upscaling. The chip maker has also added enhancements to improve low-light photography, better wireless audio sharing via Bluetooth, and faster 5G connectivity across more networks.

Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 Chipset Unveiled

In a press release, the chip maker unveiled the Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 mobile platform. The chipset is the first in the series to be fabricated on the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's (TSMC) 4nm process technology. In the past, Qualcomm has used a 4nm node from Samsung.

The processor also becomes the first in the series to get ARMv9-based CPU cores and features the Cortex-A720 as the prime core clocked at 2.3GHz. Additionally, there are three A720 performance cores with a clock speed of 2.2GHz, and four Cortex-A520 efficiency cores clocked at 2.3GHz. Notably, the mobile platform gets a Kyro series CPU, Adreno GPU, and the Qualcomm Hexagon neural processing unit (NPU) for AI inference.

Qualcomm's Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 SoC is claimed to offer 11 percent higher CPU performance, 29 percent faster graphics rendering, and 12 percent improved power optimisation. Notably, the company did not share any details about the Adreno GPU.

Coming to features, the new chipset comes with the Qualcomm AI Engine which brings INT4 support for the first time in the series. It will allow faster AI processing for devices while optimising the models to fit the limited amount of RAM.

For cameras, the Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 processor sports triple 12-bit ISPs that will support sensors up to 200-megapixel. It will also support 4K HDR video recording at 30fps. Other supported formats include HDR10, HLG, and 10-bit HEIF.

Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 can support up to full-HD+ (1080+) resolution with up to 144Hz refresh rate. Qualcomm highlighted that the new chipset supports up to 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM with a speed of 3,200Mhz. It also offers UFS 3.1 support for storage. The 5G modem supports sub-6GHz and mmWave with downlink speeds of up to 2.9Gbps. The mobile platform also supports Wi-Fi 6E (802.11ax), Bluetooth 5.4 with aptX Adaptive, triple frequency positioning for GPS receivers, and USB Type-C 3.1 connectivity.

Realme, Oppo, and Honor are expected to announce smartphones with the Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 SoC in the coming months.