Qualcomm unveils Snapdragon 8 Elite with custom cores for Android phones

During day one of Qualcomm's Snapdragon Summit in Maui, Hawaii, it unveiled its latest flagship SoC, dubbed the Snapdragon 8 Elite. This marks a pivotal swing into harnessing the technical prowess of its acquired Nuvia team.

The new chip is powered by Qualcomm's in-house Oryon cores and moves away from its reliance on Arm's off-the-shelf Cortex cores to drive its flagship mobile SoC. The chipmaker, however, hasn't strayed too far, as the Oryon cores are still based on Arm's v8.7-A ISA, but it's certainly a step away from previous generations, as Qualcomm is aiming to do things on its own terms.

Featured in the Snapdragon 8 Elite, the new Oryon cores replace the Kryo cores that Qualcomm has long relied on. The outfit claims this new Elite SoC delivers a 44 percent improvement in power efficiency over the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, though ...