Just as the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 is about to be unveiled, a notable leak from a well-known Weibo source has begun to reveal information about its successor, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5.
Core Configuration and Clock Speeds
According to the leak, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 will maintain a similar core setup as the 8 Gen 4, featuring 2 performance cores and 6 efficiency cores. However, it is expected that there will be a substantial increase in clock speeds. The performance cores, rumored to be codenamed Pegasus, are said to reach an impressive 5.0 GHz. Meanwhile, the efficiency cores might run at 4.0 GHz, which is significantly higher than the anticipated 4.32 GHz for performance cores and 3.53 GHz for efficiency cores in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4.
Potential Production Variants
There may be a caveat, as the leak implies that these high clock speeds could be exclusive to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 variant produced on TSMC’s N3P fabrication node. Qualcomm has previously indicated a dual-sourcing approach for the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5, meaning that both TSMC and Samsung Foundry will be involved in its production. This suggests that another version of the chip, likely aimed at Samsung's Galaxy devices, could be produced using Samsung’s SF2 node.
The specific clock speeds for the Samsung-manufactured version are still uncertain, but there are speculations that the SF2 node might also deliver strong performance. Consequently, the Samsung version of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 could potentially equal or even exceed the performance of the variant produced by TSMC.
Current Focus on Snapdragon 8 Gen 4
At this stage, it's premature to delve deeply into the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5, as Qualcomm is currently concentrating on finalizing its flagship SoC for 2025, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4. This provides plenty of time for the details regarding its successor to evolve. Nevertheless, if the leak is accurate, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 is set to offer a noteworthy performance enhancement over its predecessor.
