Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC Details Leak, Tipped to Feature Reworked CPU Clusters, Drop 32-Bit Support

Details about Qualcomm's next-gen flagship SoC have begun trickling in, months ahead of its expected debut. The upcoming Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC is said to feature a restructured CPU cluster layout, and will most likely support only 64-bit computing, removing all 32-bit support. The chip is said to be codenamed either Lanai or Pineapple, and is expected to be launched in late 2023, possibly during Qualcomm's annual Summit in Hawaii. If the company's past launches are anything to go by, then we'll probably also see debut of a Snapdragon 8+ Gen 2 SoC as a mid-year refresh with improved thermal performance and power efficiency. It's hard to say if the Gen 3 SoC will actually arrive in phones this year or if we will have to wait until 2024.

The details come via a thread on Twitter by Kuba Wojciechowski (@Za_Raczke) who claims that this next-gen chip will have the model number SM8650, and will be codenamed Lanai, or Pineapple. The tweet states that it will have a new CPU configuration with a 2+3+2+1 structure. This includes two ARM Hayes (A5XX) “Silver” cores, three ARM Hunter (A7XX) “Gold” cores, two ARM Hunter (A7XX) “Titanium” cores, and one ARM Hunter ELP (Xn) “Gold” core. This will be Qualcomm's first chip to have “Titanium” cluster and as of now, it's unclear how it will differ from the “Gold” cluster. Wojciechowski mentions that this new cluster could be configured differently with more cache, or could simply be clocked higher.

The tweet further explains that the ARM Hunter and Hunter (ELP) are brand new, unannounced CPU cores. This new cluster configuration will be very different from the current 1+4+3 layout, and seems to contradict the earlier leak we had which suggested the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 would have a 1+5+2 configuration.

Wojciechowski claims that Qualcomm's code also confirms that this SoC will only support 64-bit computing. The GPU in the upcoming chip is said to be the Adreno 750 and currently has a peak clock speed of 770MHz — although it's possible that this could change by the time the SoC is announced. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 is also said to run on version 6.1 of the Linux kernel with Android 14.

Previous rumours suggested that the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC could launch early this year and would receive a 25 percent bump in performance. If this is indeed true, then it's also possible that Qualcomm might skip a Snapdragon 8+ Gen 2 model and directly release its successor.