Qualcomm unveils two new smartphone chips with AI focus

Qualcomm today announced two flagship smartphone processors, called Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 and Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6, with a focus on enabling better AI-focused features.

At its annual Snapdragon Summit, Qualcomm said the new chips can help improve personalization for AI agents. The chips have new sensing hubs that can run small models of up to 200 million parameters. With the new sensing hub, smartphones can run a personal scribe locally and differentiate between speakers. It can also build memory based on your usage to offer better suggestions for automating tasks. The company said it can run a complete voice-in and voice-out agent through the new chip.

The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 has a new accelerator element designed to run models more efficiently. The high-end Extreme version can run a 30 billion parameter mixture-of-experts (MoE) model locally. This means that while the overall model size is 30B, the model only activates a certain number of parameters for a particular task.

For comparison, at its Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in June, Apple released a 20-billion-parameter mixture-of-experts model, the most advanced of its third generation of foundation models.

The new Qualcomm CPU also provides pixel-level control for cameras to enable more pro-level experiences, along with improved stabilization and motion understanding. The Extreme version can support video recording at 8k60fps and at 4K240 for ultra HD slow-motion. It also enables the new Advanced Professional Video (APV) codec for pro-level recording.

What’s more, both chips can use AI to boost vocals and reduce noise. It also has Qualcomm’s new voice bubble tech, which isolates users’ noise during calls.

At the event, Motorola announced its Motorola Signature 27 smartphone, powered by the Snapdragon Gen 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6, with general availability sometime this year.

Qualcomm has been working on more than 40 AI devices, but there is still a belief that many people will use their phones for AI rather than other dedicated devices. Nothing co-founder Carl Pei has hinted at this trend in the past, and more recently, new Apple CEO John Ternus reinforced the same line of thought during the iPhone Duo launch earlier this month.